Effect of the potential triplex DNA region on the in vitro expression of bacterial beta-lactamase gene in superhelical recombinant plasmids.

The effect of a pyrimidine/purine-biased stretch which has the potential to form an unusual triplex DNA structure on gene expression has been analyzed by measuring the activity of beta-lactamase as a reporter gene in recombinant plasmids. The Escherichia coli transformant carrying the plasmid p7ERS which has a potential triplex DNA region expressed about twofold more beta-lactamase activity than that carrying the plasmid pUC19. Since the expression of beta-lactamase has been shown to be affected by template topology in vitro, this in vivo observation suggests that the inserted pyrimidine/purine-biased stretch modulates the topology of flanking regions by forming unusual DNA structure to keep the template at the superhelicity favorable for the expression of beta-lactamase.