MISCHKLONE U.V.-INDUZIERTER MUTANTEN BEIM PHAGEN KAPPA

Abstract— Clear-plaque mutations of phage k of Serratia are induced by extracellular u.v.-irradiation in a 2–hit process. The 2–hit-nature cannot be due to induction of one hit in each of the two DNA-strands since replating the contents of 97 wildtype plaques of u.v.-survivors (u.v.-dose 4.5 min) revealed only 1 case of heterozygosity; at least 20 cases would have been expected if phage with 1–hit-mutations formed phages looking like wildtype. On the other hand, only 1 case of heterozygosity was observed among replatings of 94 c -mutants induced by the u.v.-dose 4.5 min (survival 10^-3); most of the plaques contained pure c -type. The pure c -mutant clones are very probably due to 'recessive' lethal lesions in the nonpremutated DNA-strand. This is indicated by the dose dependence of the frequency of heterozygotes; at a dose of 3 min u.v. (survival 1.2 × 10^--²) 9 heterozygotes were observed among 95 mutants tested. From these numbers the rate of induction by u.v. of the recessive lesions's can be calculated. The data at the higher dose are in satisfactory agreement with the calculated rate. Also other types of plaque mutations (e, t, b ) showed heterozygosity. Two cases of abnormal heterozygosity were observed; one contained 2 stable mutant types ( c and b ), another one wildtype, c -tm and l -type.