Mutagenesis by neocarzinostatin in Escherichia coli and Salmonella typhimurium: requirement for umuC+ or plasmid pKM101.

Neocarzinostatin, a protein with antibiotic activity, is a bacterial mutagen. We have investigated the mutagenicity of neocarzinostatin towards Salmonella typhimurium and discovered that, unlike the situation in Escherichia coli, neocarzinostatin will revert base pair substitution mutations (missense or nonsense). However, when the R46 factor derivative, plasmid pKM101, was introduced, the mutagenicity of neocarzinostatin towards base pair substitution-carrying mutants of S. typhimurium was readily detected. Neocarzinostatin had only modest activity in reverting a frameshift mutation in S. typhimurium, but that activity, too, required the presence of pKM101. Mutant pKM101 plasmids which no longer enhanced mutagenesis also lost their ability to promote neocarzinostatin-induced mutations. Finally, the umuC36 mutation, which renders E. coli nonmutable by ultraviolet light, also rendered the bacteria nonmutable by neocarzinostatin. The effect of the umuC36 mutation was suppressed by plasmid pKM101.