Error-prone DNA repair and translesion DNA synthesis

Evelyn Witkin hypothesized in 1967 that bacterial cell division is controlled by a repressor which, like the lambda repressor, is inactivated by a complex process that starts with the presence of replication-blocking lesions in the DNA. She further suggested that this might not be the only cellular function to show induction by DNA damage. Three years later, Miroslav Radman, in a privately circulated note, proposed that one such function might be an inaccurate (mutation-prone) DNA polymerase under the control of the recA and lexA genes. Thus was born the SOS hypothesis.