Potential Synergistic Effects of Rifampicin Resistance and rec Mutations on Growth Rate in Escherichia coli

Both the RecBCD pathway, known for its involvement in homologous recombination and repair of double stranded DNA breaks, and the RecFOR pathway may recognize the linear fragments of DNA that are introduced to the cell during transposition, affecting the transposition frequency. The exact nature of how Rec pathways are involved in transposition is a current topic of research. In this study, using a suicide plasmid system, we attempted to compare transposition frequencies of Tn5 in various Escherichia coli rec mutants. Unfortunately, our results did not provide further insight into the involvement of RecBCD and RecFOR in transposition. However, they do suggest that rifampicin should not be used as a selectable marker for future studies involved in the Rec pathways. ________________________________________________________________