Rapid site-specific DNA inversion in Escherichia coli mutants lacking the histonelike protein H-NS.

Escherichia coli pilG mutants are thought to have a dramatically higher DNA inversion rate as measured by the site-specific DNA inversion of the type 1 pili pilA promoter. DNA sequence of the pilG gene confirmed its identity to the gene encoding the bacterial histonelike protein H-NS. Unlike other histonelike protein complexes that enhance site-specific DNA recombination, the H-NS protein inhibited this process. This inhibition was indicated by the increased inversion rate of the pilA promoter region effected by two different mutant pilG alleles. One of these alleles, pilG1, conferred a mutant phenotype only at low temperature attributable to a T-to-G transversion in the -35 sequence of the pilG promoter. The other allele, pilG2-tetR, was an insertion mutation in the pilG coding region that conferred the mutant phenotype independent of temperature. We measured an approximately 100-fold-increased pilA promoter inversion rate in the mutant by exploiting the temperature-dependent expression of pilG1 and using a novel rapid-population-sampling method. Contrary to one current view on how the H-NS protein might act to increase DNA inversion rate, we found no evidence to support the hypothesis that DNA supercoiling affected pilA promoter inversion.