Isolation and some properties of cell envelope altered mutants of Escherichia coli

Mutants of Escherichia coli which have a defect in their permeability barrier were selected. The technique used was to employ a strain of E. coli having a deletion in the gene for lactose permease and to select for mutants which can grow on lactose at 40 C. Twenty such mutants were isolated and six of these were found to be more sensitive to actinomycin D, sodium deoxycholate, and sodium dodecyl sulfate than was the parental strain. They were also more sensitive to the antibiotics vancomycin and bacitracin, which inhibit peptidoglycan biosynthesis. These mutants were no more sensitive to several different colicins or phages than was the wild-type strain. One of the mutants selected by this technique has an abnormal morphology when grown on certain carbon sources in minimal medium, and this mutant is more extensively studied in the accompanying paper.