Radiation damage and repair in cells and cell components. Progress report, 1980-1981

One aim has been to see whether, in E.coli, the various phenomena which were ascribed to the induction of the recA gene produce (p-recA) are really manifestations of one process. It was concluded that this is true for septum inhibition, Weigle-reactivation, induced inhibition of post radiation DNA degradation, and with the additional concept of a premutational lesion, for uv mutagenesis. lambda prophage induction may perhaps be brought into line with p-recA induction with the consideration of the additional secondary aspects of (a) activation of p-recA to make it enzymatically active and (b) the need to have the concentration of activated p-recA high enough to keep up with the rate of production of lambda-repressors. Revertants seem to be in more than one class and two of these can not easily be explained by the idea that p-recA contains an error-prone repair enzyme that makes errors at mutagenic lesions