Yal e [ niv er S1 ty Department of Human Genetics Campus address:
Yale University School of Medicine 1-310 Sterling Hall of Medicine
I-310 SHM 333 Cedar Street
P.O. Box 3333

New Haven, Connecticut 06510-8005

May 14, 1985

   
   

  

MAY 17' 1985

Dr. Joshua Lederberg, President
Rockefeller University

1250 York Avenue

New York, NY 10021

4
Ree oF rye pees’

Dear Josh:

I don't have any bibliography on crossing-over in K-12 and I don't
know of anyone else who would have one. The results of thousands of
crosses are scattered through the literature and it would be difficult to
locate them. Once cotransduction became available for mapping, very little
was done with conjugational mapping. The usual procedure is to do a
conjugational cross to get a rough idea as to where the locus is and then
to map it by cotransduction. Often the data for the conjugational crosses
aren't even published in the papers reporting mapping of new loci.

So one would have to go back to the older literature. Some papers

that might be very helpful to you in thinking about this and in locating
the older literature are:

Low, K.B. 1972 Escherichia coli K-12 F-prime factors, old and new.
Bacteriol. Revs. 36:587-607.

(This paper described all of the Hfr's and the F's derived from them.)

 

Low, B. 1973 Rapid mapping of conditional and auxotrophic mutations
in Escherichia coli K-12. J. Bacteriol. 113:798-812. .
(This paper deals with mapping using Hfr's and F's.)

 

Low, B. 1967 Inversion of transfer modes and sex factor-chromosome
interactions in conjugation in Escherichia coli. J. Bacteriol.

pscnericnia coll .
93:98-106.
(This paper has some time-of-entry date for distant markers in
interrupted matings.)

Broda, P. 1967 The formation of Hfr strains in Escherichia coli K12.
Genet. Res. 9:35-47.

(This was interesting in its day, but note that R. Deonier has studied
in recent years the IS sites at which F integrates to form Hfr's and
it is worked out at the molecular level.)

For older literature giving the results of conjugation studies, Jacob
and Wollman's book "Sexuality and the Genetics of Bacteria", Academic
Press. (1961) should be helpful.

Also, in the early genetic maps of A.L. Taylor, he reported the
mapping of many markers by conjugation experiments. These papers are:
Taylor, A.L. and M.S. Thoman 1964 The genetic map of Escherichia
coli K-12. Genetics 50:569-677.

Taylor, A.L. and C.D. Trotter 1967 Revised linkage map of
Escherichia coli. Bacteriol. Rev. 31:332-353.

Taylor, A.L. 1970 Current linkage map of Escherichia coli.
Bacteriol. Rev. 34:155-175.

P.G. de Haan mapped some markers by "gradient of transmission" and
proposed the general use of the method. de Haan et al. 1969 Recombination
in Escherichia coli. III. Mapping by gradient of transmission. Mutat.
Res. 8:505-512. (This method turned out to be rather inaccurate, at least
in his hands. His mapping of guaCG was about 3 minutes off in this paper.)

That's about all that I have to offer. The precise location of the
points of origin of most of the Hfr's is now known. Many distances on the
map are known in kilobases. Some Hfr's transfer the chromosome faster than
do others. All slow down as transfer proceeds, some more than others.
Markers that are transferred very early are not often integrated. All of
these things can now be taken into account.

©

Sincerely,

De Baw

Barfbara J. Bachmann

Curator, E.coli Genetic Stock Center
BIB/rsj