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Journal of Bacteriology, August 2006, p. 5831-5838, Vol. 188, No. 16
0021-9193/06/$08.00+0     doi:10.1128/JB.00630-06

Mutator and Antimutator Effects of the Bacteriophage P1 hot Gene Product

Laboratory of Molecular Genetics, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, Research Triangle Park, North Carolina 27709,¹ D. I. Ivanovsky Institute of Virology, Russian Academy of Medical Science, Moscow 123098, Russia²

Received 3 May 2006/ Accepted 31 May 2006

The Hot (homolog of theta) protein of bacteriophage P1 can substitute for the Escherichia coli DNA polymerase III subunit, as evidenced by its stabilizing effect on certain dnaQ mutants that carry an unstable polymerase III proofreading subunit (antimutator effect). Here, we show that Hot can also cause an increase in the mutability of various E. coli strains (mutator effect). The hot mutator effect differs from the one caused by the lack of . Experiments using chimeric /Hot proteins containing various domains of Hot and along with a series of point mutants show that both N- and C-terminal parts of each protein are important for stabilizing the subunit. In contrast, the N-terminal part of Hot appears uniquely responsible for its mutator activity.