Chloramine mutagenesis in Bacillus subtilis.

Chloramine (which occurs widely as a by-product of sanitary chlorination of water supplies) is shown to be a weak mutagen, when reversion of trpC to trpC in Bacillus subtilis is used as an assay. Some DNA-repair mutants appear to be more sensitive to chloramine, suggesting the involvement of DNA targets in bactericide. The influence of plating media on survival of cells treated with chloramine suggests a bacterial repair system acting upon potentially lethal lesions induced by chloramine.