Nalidixic acid inhibition of post-ultraviolet recovery in Escherichia coli K-12: requirement for recBC function.

Various repair-deficient mutants of Escherichia coli K-12 were tested for the impairment of post-ultraviolet survival by nalidixic acid. These studies have shown that the target of this nalidixic acid effect is dictated by the recB and recC genes and may be due to the binding of nalidixic acid to exonuclease V. Furthermore, this effect cannot be correlated with either recombination proficiency or excision repair alone.