Survival and mutagenesis in UV-irradiated phage: multi-hit kinetics of mutation induction and lack of indirect induction by infection with UV-irradiated phage of error-prone repair.

Abstract

The paper is concerned with the question of whether WEIGLE-reactivation (WR) and WEIGLE-mutagenesis (WM) can be indirectly induced by infection with UV-irradiated phage. Experiments neither with phage lambda of Escherichia coli nor with phage chi of Serratia marcescens show such induction-In this respects phage DNA differs from F'-DNA or Hfr-DNA; possible explanations are discussed. In both systems clear phage mutations can also be induced by UV without irradiation of the host cells; they appear, in unirradiated and irradiated host cells, with an increase of frequency which is greater than proportional to the UV dose. It is concluded that mutation induction of phage in the unirradiated host cells is due to a low level constitutive mutagenic repair; this could either be due to "spontaneous" induction of the mutagenic SOS-function or it could be a mechanism different from this one. Host irradiation would give rise to additional activity by the induced SOS-function leading to WR and WM. It is further concluded that deviation of the induction kinetics from a linear dose-dependence is not due to the necessary induction of SOS-functions.