Transfection in Pneumococcus: Single-Strand Intermediates in the Formation of Infective Centers

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Transfection has been found and characterized in pneumococcus. For replicating ω3 phage DNA extracted from infected cells, transfection was relatively efficient and rose linearly with DNA concentration and quadratically with time, according to T(T - 3.5) min2. For mature DNA extracted from phage particles, transfection was hardly detectable below 1 μg/ml but increased about as the cube of the DNA concentration up to 100 μg/ml, and was still rising at concentrations over 200 μg/ml. The kinetics suggest a dependence on a mixed cubic function of the time of exposure of cells to mature DNA. Cell and phage DNAs competed with each other for transformation and transfection. Transfection was reduced much more strongly than transformation in cells that were deficient in the membrane-bound endonuclease required for conversion of donor duplex DNA to intracellular single strands; these data agree with the kinetic data in implying that independent entry of segments of two strands is necessary for transfection by replicating ω3 phage DNA and entry of at least three strands is necessary for transfection by mature DNA. To reconcile differing DNA concentration dependences of transfection and transformation with a common entry path, it was necessary to reexamine data on transformation and to recognize that this process continued to rise slowly through the concentration region usually described as “plateau.” These results and the transfection data reflect multiple binding and nicking events that occurred on the cell surface before entry. Our conclusion is that transfection in pneumococcus occurs by association inside the cell of segments of single strands of phage DNA that have entered independently, creating gapped structures that need repair synthesis to create infective centers. Physical recombination is therefore automatically a prerequisite to transfection.

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