Functional cooperation of the dnaE and dnaN gene products in Escherichia coli

A system was designed to isolate second-site intergenic suppressors of a thermosensitive mutation of the dnaE gene of Escherichia coli. The dnaE gene codes for the alpha subunit of DNA polymerase III [McHenry, C. S. & Crow, W. (1979) J. Biol. Chem. 254, 1748-1753]. One such suppressor, named sueA77, was finely mapped and found to be located at 82 min on the E. coli chromosome, between dnaA and recF, and within the dnaN gene [Sakakibara, Y. & Mizukami, T. (1980) Mol. Gen. Genet. 178, 541-553]. The dnaN gene codes for the beta subunit of DNA polymerase III holoenzyme [Burgers, P. M. J., Kornberg, A. & Sakakibara, Y. (1981) Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 78, 5391-5395]. The sueA77 mutation was trans-dominant over its wild-type allele, and it suppressed different thermosensitive mutations of dnaE with different maximal permissive temperature. These properties were interpreted as providing genetic evidence for interaction of the dnaE and dnaN gene products in E. coli.