Defects in the central metabolism prevent thymineless death in Escherichia coli, while still allowing significant protein synthesis.

ABSTRACT: Starvation of Escherichia coli thyA auxotrophs for the required thymine or thymidine leads to the cessation of DNA synthesis and, unexpectedly, to thymineless death (TLD). Previously, TLD-alleviating defects were identified by the candidate gene approach, for their contribution to replication initiation, fork repair, or SOS induction. However, no TLD-blocking mutations were ever found, suggesting a multifactorial nature of TLD. Since (until recently) no unbiased isolation of TLD suppressors was reported, we used enrichment after insertional mutagenesis to systematically isolate TLD suppressors. Our approach was validated by isolation of known TLD-alleviating mutants in recombinational repair. At the same time, and unexpectedly for the current TLD models, most of the isolated suppressors af

SUBMITTER: Khan SR 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11538421 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature