The bacterial SOS response to unusual levels of DNA damage has been recognized and studied for several decades. Pathways for re-establishing inactivated replication forks under normal growth conditions have received far less attention. In bacteria growing aerobically in the absence of SOS-inducing conditions, many replication forks encounter DNA damage, leading to inactivation. The pathways for fork reactivation involve the homologous recombination systems, are nonmutagenic, and integrate almost every aspect of DNA metabolism. On a frequency-of-use basis, these pathways represent the main function of bacterial DNA recombination systems, as well as the main function of a number of other enzymatic systems that are associated with replication and site-specific recombination.

SummaryThe positions of DNA regions close to the chromosome replication origin and terminus in growing cells of Escherichia coli have been visualized simultaneously, using new widely applicable reagents. Furthermore, the positions of these regions with respect to a replication factory-associated protein have been analysed. Time-lapse analysis has allowed the fate of origins, termini and the FtsZ ring to be followed in a lineage-specific manner during the formation of microcolonies. These experiments reveal new aspects of the E. coli cell cycle and demonstrate that the replication terminus region is frequently located asymmetrically, on the new pole side of mid-cell. This asymmetry could provide a mechanism by which the chromosome segregation protein FtsK, located at the division septum, can act directionally to ensure that the septal region is free of DNA before the completion of cell division.

The multiprotein replisome complex that replicates DNA, has been extensively characterized in vitro, but its composition and architecture in vivo is unknown. Using millisecond single molecule fluorescence microscopy in living cells expressing YPet derivatives of replisome components, we have examined replisome stoichiometry and architecture. Active Escherichia coli replisomes contain three molecules of the replicative polymerase, rather than the historically accepted two. These are associated with three molecules of τ, a clamp loader component that trimerizes polymerase. Only two of the three sliding clamps are always associated with the core replisome. Single strand binding protein has a broader spatial distribution than the core components, with five to eleven tetramers per replisome. This in vivo technique could provide single molecule insight into other molecular machines.Replisomes are dynamic multiprotein machines that replicate DNA by copying the leading strand template continuously and the lagging strand template discontinuously. In E. colithe replisome couples activities of more than 11 proteins during genome replication (1, 2). The DnaB helicase, loaded onto the lagging strand template, separates the two templates that are subsequently copied by PolIII polymerase ([αεθ). PolIII processivity results from binding to a sliding clamp (β) encircling duplex DNA; sliding clamps are added and removed by a clamp loader ([τ/γ] 3 δδ′ψχ) whose τ component oligomerizes PolIII. Unwound DNA on the lagging template strand is bound by single strand binding protein (Ssb) tetramers that remove DNA secondary structure and protect against nucleases. Primase binds to helicase during cycles of priming and DNA synthesis on the lagging strand template.

FtsK acts at the bacterial division septum to couple chromosome segregation with cell division. We demonstrate that a truncated FtsK derivative, FtsK(50C), uses ATP hydrolysis to translocate along duplex DNA as a multimer in vitro, consistent with FtsK having an in vivo role in pumping DNA through the closing division septum. FtsK(50C) also promotes a complete Xer recombination reaction between dif sites by switching the state of activity of the XerCD recombinases so that XerD makes the first pair of strand exchanges to form Holliday junctions that are then resolved by XerC. The reaction between directly repeated dif sites in circular DNA leads to the formation of uncatenated circles and is equivalent to the formation of chromosome monomers from dimers.

Plasmid ColE1, like many other small non-conjugative plasmids, is present in multiple copies (about 15 per chromsome equivalent) in Escherichia coli cells. Because of their high copy number, the replication of such plasmids has been described as 'relaxed', even though there is good evidence that it is strictly controlled: ColE1 derivatives have characteristic but different copy numbers and ColE1 copy-number mutants have been characterised. No plasmid-specified protein is essential for the replication of ColE1 and related plasmids, as extensive replication can occur in chloramphenicol-treated cells, in plasmid-free chloramphenicol-treated cells transfected with a hybrid ColE1/phage replicon and in vitro in extracts derived from plasmid-free cells. Nevertheless, it is possible that a plasmid-specified protein is involved in ColE1 replication control in viable cells. Here we show that deletion of a given non-essential region from ColE1-like plasmids results in a raised copy number. Such plasmids are stably maintained and have their copy number returned to normal when a complementing plasmid is present in the same cell, indicating that a plasmid-specified diffusible gene product regulates the plasmid content of ColE1-containing cells. Deletion of the equivalent region from the cloning vector pBR322 gives a derivative which has a raised copy number and which has also lost its origin for conjugal transfer; unlike pBR322, it cannot be mobilised.