Thermosensitive Mutants of E. coli Affected in the Processes of DNA Synthesis and Cellular Division

  1. Y. Hirota,
  2. A. Ryter, and
  3. F. Jacob
  1. Service de génétique cellulaire, Institut Pasteur and Collège de France, Paris, France

This extract was created in the absence of an abstract.

Excerpt

The division cycle of a bacterium involves a complex series of events. In a cell, which contains one or two nuclei, the DNA is replicated so that two or four nuclei are formed; the cell elongates and the DNA replicas progressively separate from each other; a septum is then formed near the equatorial plane of the cell so that two cells, each one containing half the DNA content of the mother cell, are formed and separate from each other (Robinow, 1944).

The isolation of various mutants and the study of their biochemical defects has proved particularly useful for the analysis of many cellular processes. We have begun to use this approach for a study of cellular division in bacteria. A certain number of mutants altered in one or several aspects of the division cycle of E. coli have been isolated (Kohiyama et al., 1966). All these mutants are conditional, thermosensitive...

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