Caffeine as a comutagen for ethylmethanesulfonate in strains of phage T4.

The mutation frequency of DNA polymerase mutants of phage T4 treated with ethyl methanesulfonate (EMS) then incubated in the presence and absence of caffeine was studied using an rII reversion system. The DNA polymerase mutation is shown to be antimutagenic for EMS induction of reversions which occur by a GC to AT transition. Caffeine acts as a comutagen for the induction by EMS of mutant phages and produces a significant increase in the frequency of reversions from rII to r+. Caffeine is slightly mutagenic for the phage strain carrying the wild type polymerase and inhibits the action of the 3' leads to 5' exonuclease function of T4 DNA polymerase as measured in vitro. These findings suggest that caffeine acts by directly influencing nucleotide selection or the editing function of the DNA polymerase.