on the mechanism of gene amplification induced under stress in escherichia coli基因扩增诱导机制的压力下的大肠杆菌.pdfVIP

On the Mechanism of Gene Amplification Induced under Stress in Escherichia coli 1¤ 1 2 1,2,3,4 1* Andrew Slack , P. C. Thornton , Daniel B. Magner , Susan M. Rosenberg , P. J. Hastings 1 Department of Molecular and Human Genetics, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas, United States of America, 2 Interdepartmental Program in Cell and Molecular Biology, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas, United States of America, 3 Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas, United States of America, 4 Department of Molecular Virology and Microbiology, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas, United States of America Gene amplification is a collection of processes whereby a DNA segment is reiterated to multiple copies per genome. It is important in carcinogenesis and resistance to chemotherapeutic agents, and can underlie adaptive evolution via increased expression of an amplified gene, evolution of new gene functions, and genome evolution. Though first described in the model organism Escherichia coli in the early 1960s, only scant information on the mechanism(s) of amplification in this system has been obtained, and many models for mechanism(s) were possible. More recently, some gene amplifications in E. coli were shown to be stress-inducible and to confer a selective advantage to cells under stress (adaptive amplifications), potentially accelerating evolution specifically when cells are poorly adapted to their environment. We focus on stress-induced amplification in E. coli and report several findings that indicate a novel molecular mechanism, and we suggest that most amplifications might be stress-induced, not spontaneous. First, as often hypothesized, but not