Summary
The extreme polarity shown by operator proximal nonsense mutations in the lacZ gene and the resulting lack of full-length lacZ mRNA have been used to estimate transcriptional errors at such a locus. The resudual β-galactosidase activity in strains carrying lacZ 2 or the same allele with a rho mutation indicate an RNA polymerase error rate of 1.4×10-4.
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Communicated by C. Böck
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Rosenberger, R.F., Foskett, G. An estimate of the frequency of in vivo transcriptional errors at a nonsense codon in Escherichia coli . Molec. Gen. Genet. 183, 561–563 (1981). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00268784
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00268784