Study of involvement of ImuB and DnaE2 in stationary-phase mutagenesis in Pseudomonas putida

Several bacterial species carry in their genomes a so-called “mutagenesis” gene cluster encoding ImuB which is similar to Y-family DNA polymerases, and DnaE2 related to the catalytic subunit DnaE of Pol III. Y-family DNA polymerases are known to be involved in stationary-phase mutagenesis and DnaE2 homologues characterized so far have expressed a mutator phenotype. In this study, we raised a question about the involvement of ImuB and DnaE2 in stationary-phase mutagenesis. Here, we show that Pseudomonas putida ImuB and DnaE2 have antagonistic effects on stationary-phase mutagenesis. ImuB facilitated accumulation of stationary-phase mutants up to two-fold. In contrast to that, DnaE2 had no significant effect on emergence of 1-bp deletion mutants and moreover, it acted as an anti-mutator in accumulation of base substitution mutants in starving bacteria. Similar antagonistic effects of DnaE2 and ImuB on mutagenesis appeared also in UV-mutagenesis study. This data distinguishes the DnaE2 of P. putida from its homologues studied in other organisms.