Isolation and characterization of prototrophic relaxed mutants of Klebsiella pneumoniae.

A new selection procedure has been developed for isolating prototrophic relaxed mutants of Klebsiella pneumoniae. Two mutants were isolated. One of them showed a fully relaxed phenotype, while the other one behaved in a semi-relaxed way. The wild-type strain, as well as the rel mutants exerted similar patterns to their E. coli counterparts in RNA, protein, ppGpp and pppGpp accumulation during amino starvation, carbon source shift-down and nitrogen starvation. Both mutants became stringent after introducing an F'-factor carrying the relA+ allele from Escherichia coli. The relaxed phenotype could be recovered by curing the F'-factor. Some of the pleiotropic consequences of rel mutations found in E. coli are present in the Klebsiella mutants also while some of them are absent. The mutants are defective in dinitrogen fixation after the exhaustion of limiting ammonium from the culture medium. However, their merodiploid derivatives, carrying the E. coli relA+ allele, showed the wild-type level of nitrogenase activity under the same conditions.