Abstract
BECKWITH and Scaife1,2 showed that the suppressor allele suA of Escherichia coli does not suppress nonsense codons in the lactose operon, but does relieve the polarity effect of UAG, UAA and possibly frameshift mutations. It is shown here that suA E. coli strongly suppresses phage T4 amber mutations and weakly suppresses phage T4 temperature-sensitive and amber mutations. Suppression of the inhibitory effect of chloramphenicol on phage T4 growth by suA was also shown. In addition, amber mutants of phage T7 were observed to be suppressed by suA. These results suggest that suA in addition to suppressing polarity in E. coli also increases translational ambiguity in T4 and T7-infected cells, especially for the amber codon.
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HOLMES, G. Suppression of phage nonsense and temperature-sensitive mutants by an suA mutant E. coli. Nature 250, 73–75 (1974). https://doi.org/10.1038/250073a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/250073a0
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