A factor which inactivates the phage lambda can be extracted from
Escherichia coli
. This factor is a protein and is located in the outer membrane of the bacterial envelope. It is found in extracts of strains which are sensitive to phage lambda, but not in extracts of strains specifically resistant to this phage. We conclude that this factor is the lambda receptor, responsible for the specific adsorption of the phage lambda to
E. coli
cells. A partial purification of the lambda receptor is described. Inactivation of the phage by purified receptor is shown to be accompanied by the release of deoxyribonucleic acid from the phage.
Results presented here and by others indicate that the release of colicins from producing cells can be uncoupled from the decline in culture turbidity which usually occurs within 2‐3 h after the induction of colicin synthesis. This excludes lysis as a necessary event in colicin release. Conversely, the failure to dissociate colicin release from the normally simultaneous release of a specific subset of soluble proteins argues against the idea of a specific colicin secretion system sensu‐stricto. Rather, colicin release appears to be a consequence of semi‐specific leakage resulting from an alteration of the permeability properties of the cell envelope. This alteration is caused by the ‘lysis protein’ known to be encoded by most multiple copy number Col plasmids. The finding that the expression of the lysis gene of plasmid ColE2 renders the cells exquisitely sensitive to lysozyme demonstrates that the permeability of the outer membrane must indeed be altered. Evidence is presented that this alteration could be due at least in part to the activation of the detergent‐resistant phospholipase A (pldA product). Lysophosphatidylethanolamine, a product of the action of phospholipase on phosphatidylethanolamine, is a membrane perturbant which could alter the permeability properties of the envelope and allow some proteins such as colicin to leak out of the cell.
Simian virus 40 gene A has previously been shown to promote the replication of viral DNA and the transcription of late viral RNA in productive infection and to maintain the growth characteristics of some transformed cells. The present study examines the effect of the A function on proteins synthesized during productive and transforming infections. Under restrictive conditions, temperature-sensitive A mutants induce the overproduction of a 100,000-dalton protein both in productively infected monkey cells and in transformed rabbit cells. Immunoprecipitation of the induced protein with antisera, prepared against simian virus 40-induced tumors in hamsters, was used to identify the induced protein as tumor antigen. The same protein can be precipitated from extracts of cells infected by wild-type virus but not from uninfected cells. Furthermore, the mutant-induced protein is more rapidly degraded in vivo and is less tightly bound to intranuclear components than the protein induced by wild-type virus. The presence of the same virus-induced protein in infected cells from different species and the altered behavior of that protein in mutant infection strongly suggest that the protein is virus coded. Because the protein is large enough to account for the entire coding capacity in the early region of the simian virus 40 genome, the 100,000-dalton protein may well be the primary product of the only early gene identified by complementation studies, the A gene. If the 100,000-dalton protein that is overproduced in mutant infection is the A protein and the only early protein, then functional wild-type A protein must regulate its own synthesis in both productive and transforming infections.
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