Analysis of the Complex Sulfonamide Resistance Locus of Pneumococcus
This extract was created in the absence of an abstract.
Excerpt
This article will describe the transformation of pneumococci in the direction of high sulfonamide resistance, a process during which the group of closely linked genetic determinants is disseminated in fragments of varying size among the transformed cells.
The transformation of bacteria by deoxyribonucleate (DNA) from related but different strains has been shown to have the features of a genetic transfer. Development of quantitative systems for transfer of drug resistance markers in pneumococcus allowed the demonstration that the entities transferred contained single mutated units rather than all the markers of the donor (Hotchkiss, 1951). When prepared as soluble, dispersed DNA, the genetic material of pneumococcus seemed to be subject to independent reassortment of the genes governing capsule synthesis and several levels of penicillin and streptomycin resistance. These and similar examples of reassortment described since, have been taken as evidence that individual DNA molecules bear a relation to individual functional genes. It...
