Genetics: Early Online, published on September 27, 2013 as 10.1534/genetics.113.152306 1 Tolerance of Escherichia coli to fluoroquinolone antibiotics depends on specific 2 components of the SOS response pathway 3 4 Alyssa Theodore, Kim Lewis, Marin Vulić1 5 Antimicrobial Discovery Center, Department of Biology, Northeastern University, 6 Boston, Massachusetts 02115 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 1Present Address: Seres Health, 160 First Street Suite 1A, Cambridge MA 02142 1 Copyright 2013. 32 Fluoroquinolone Tolerance in Escherichia coli 33 34 Keywords: SOS response, Persisters, Tolerance, DNA repair, fluoroquinolones 35 36 Corresponding Author: 37 Marin Vulić 38 Current Address: Seres Health 39 160 First Street Suite 1A 40 Cambridge MA 02142 41
[email protected] 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 2 65 ABSTRACT 66 67 Bacteria exposed to bactericidal fluoroquinolone (FQ) antibiotics can survive without 68 becoming genetically resistant. Survival of these phenotypically resistant cells, 69 commonly called persisters, depends on the SOS gene network. We have examined 70 mutants in all known SOS-regulated genes to identify functions essential for tolerance in 71 Escherichia coli. The absence of DinG and UvrD helicases and Holliday junction 72 processing enzymes RuvA and RuvB lead to a decrease in survival. Analysis of the 73 respective mutants indicates that in addition to repair of double strand breaks, tolerance 74 depends on the repair of collapsed replication forks and stalled transcription complexes.