The terminus of the Escherichia coli chromosome is flanked by several polar replication pause sites.

Replication of two small 'constrained' regions of the Escherichia coli chromosome, one bordered by replication terminator T1 and the other by T2, displays normal velocity in the normal direction whereas it is much slower in the opposite direction (de Massy et al., 1987). The presence of multiple polar terminators has been investigated, using a bacteriophage lambda derivative which provides a replication origin movable to predetermined loci and inducible on demand. The amount of DNA made from this induced origin was determined by in vivo labelling and hybridization to probes of the surrounding region. A redundancy of terminator-like sequences, or pause sites, has been disclosed. So far, two polar pause sites, in the same orientation and separated by 50 or 80 kb, have been localized on each side of the terminus region. The results are discussed in relation to previously observations indicating that these regions are refractory to genomic inversions.