Chloramphenicol Restores Sigma Factor Activity to Sporulating Bacillus subtilis

Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 1974 December; 71(12): 4860–4863.

PMCID: PMC433998

Chloramphenicol Restores Sigma Factor Activity to Sporulating Bacillus subtilis

Jacqueline Segall, Robert Tjian, Janice Pero, and Richard Losick

¹The Biological Laboratories, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138

This article has been cited by other articles in PMC.

Abstract

The σ subunit of RNA polymerase from sporulating Bacillus subtilis is markedly inhibited in its ability to direct active transcription of phage ϕe DNA in vitro. Treatment of sporulating bacteria with chloramphenicol rapidly restores σ activity, suggesting that sporulating cells contain an inhibitor of σ that is physiologically unstable or that becomes unstable after drug treatment. The hypothetical inhibitor is depleted exponentially with an apparent half-life of 11 min at 37°.

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Selected References

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