Effect of deficiency in excision repair and umuC function on the mutagenicity with ethylene oxide in the lacI gene of E. coli.

The influence of uvrB and umuC genes on the induction of lacI- mutants and nonsense mutants by ethylene oxide (EtO) in the lacI gene of E. coli was studied. The uvrB mutation was characterized by much higher mutation frequencies. In contrast the umuC mutation does not significantly affect the induction kinetics. Thus mutation by EtO is enhanced by the lack of excision repair but not influenced by error-prone repair.