MECHANISM OF PROPHAGE P1B INDUCTION

Induction of lambdoid prophages by amino acid deprivation: differential inducibility; role of recA

Lambda prophage in auxotrophic lysogens can be induced by omission of one or combinations of the required amino acids from the culture medium. Such amino acid deprivation can result in nearly as effective induction of lambda as thymine deprivation. Prophage 424 is also induced equally effectively under both conditions although to a lesser extent than lambda. By contrast prophage 21 and lambda i21 are differentially induced effectively by thymine deprivation and virtually not at all during amino acid deprivation. The same differential induction of 21 and equivalent induction of lambda and 424 occur when all three prophages are present in the same lysogen. Increasing the levels of lambda repressor with a cI carrying-plasmid prevented amino acidless induction of lambda as did the lambda ind- mutation. A recA, but not a recB, mutation in the host prevented induction by amino acid deprivation. A recC mutant host showed increased spontaneous induction of lambda and 21 prophages. The findings reported are used as an argument that the recA protease probably is not itself acting as the inducing protease and that a likely source of the observed specificity is an effector molecule. Different effector molecules may be produced in response to different exigent situations, to which the phage repressors may have evolved sensitivity. lambda i80 was inducible both by amino acid and thymine deprivation.

Effect of cI repressor level on thymineless and spontaneous induction; specificity of lambda RNA transcription

To determine the role of the cI repressor in induction provoked by thymine deprivation, we have analyzed lambda messenger RNA made during and the effect of cI repressor levels on thymineless induction. During thymineless induction, the l- and r-strand transcription of lambda is restricted to the "early" and "delayed early" RNA. This transcriptional pattern is similar to that reported for lambda mutants defective in DNA synthesis. "Late" r-strand transcription requires the addition of thymine. A decrease (to less than 10% of 0 time) in the amount of exogenous label (3H-uridine) incorporated into total RNA by the time of maximum thymineless induction was observed. Since subsequent burst sizes are not diminished by the thymine deprivation and competition experiments show that the amount of lambda message RNA present is at least as great as that in heat induced lambda cI857 lysogens, this decrease must involve either enlarged uridine pool sizes or decreased entry of label. The introduction into the lambda lysogen of a plasmid (pKB252) carrying the lambda cI gene prevents (1) the thymineless induction of lambda (curing the plasmid restores thymineless induction) and, (2) the appearance of both spontaneously induced cells and free phage. Thus, thymineless induction is dependent on the level of cI repressor and spontaneous induction also appears to be the consequence of lowered repressor levels in lambda lysogens.