Drug Resistance of Enteric Bacteria VII. Recombination of R Factors with Tetracycline-sensitive Mutants

Abstract

Hashimoto, Hajime (Gunma University, Maebashi, Japan), and Susumu Mitsuhashi . Drug resistance of enteric bacteria. VII. Recombination of R factors with tetracycline-sensitive mutants. J. Bacteriol. 92: 1351–1356. 1966.—The transmissible drug-resistance factor R is able to confer resistance to tetracycline (TC), chloramphenicol (CM), streptomycin (SM), and sulfonamide (SA) on a host bacterium when infected by cell-to-cell contact. Tetracycline-sensitive mutants were isolated from either CM- or SM-sensitive mutants of an R factor. Among 30 mutants isolated, 10 were point mutants which could recombine with each other, forming recombinant R factors able to grow on plates containing 50 μg/ml of TC. The recombination frequency of TC-resistant recombinants was 10 −2 to 10 −3 in bacterial cells carrying two types of TC-sensitive R factors by superinfection with both factors. Segregational patterns of the various markers on the R factor, i.e., chl, str, sul , and m , the locus determining R mating, and their linkage order, were investigated among TC-resistant recombinants of the R factor. When TC was used as the selective drug, the tet locus mapped on the R factor as an end marker. In view of the fact that these results are inconsistent with the linkage order of various markers reported previously, a circular genetic structure for the R factor which includes five tet-s and three chl-s loci is presented.