An extreme mutational hotspot innlpDdepends on transcriptional induction ofrpoS

Abstract

Mutation rate varies within and between genomes. Within genomes, tracts of nucleotides, including short sequence repeats and palindromes, can cause localised elevation of mutation rate. Additional mechanisms remain poorly understood. Here we report an instance of extreme mutational bias inPseudomonas fluorescensSBW25 associated with a single base-pair change innlpD.These mutants frequently evolve in static microcosms, and have a cell-chaining (CC) phenotype. Analysis of 153 replicate populations revealed 137 independent instances of a C565T loss-of-function mutation at codon 189 (CAG to TAG (Q189*)). Fitness measures of alternativenlpDmutants showed molecular parallelism to be unconnected to selective advantage. Recognising that transcription can be mutagenic, and that codon 189 overlaps with a predicted promoter (rpoSp) for the adjacent stationary phase sigma factor,rpoS, transcription across this promoter region was measured. This confirmedrpoSpis induced in stationary phase and that C565T mutation caused significant elevation of transcription. The latter provided opportunity to determine the C565T mutation rate using a reporter-gene fused torpoSp. Fluctuation assays demonstrate the C565T mutation rate to be 5,700-fold higher than expected. InPseudomonas, transcription ofrpoSrequires the positive activator PsrA, which we show also holds for SBW25. Fluctuation assays performed in a ΔpsrAbackground showed a 60-fold reduction in mutation rate confirming that the elevated rate of mutation at C565T mutation rate is dependent on induction of transcription. This hotspot suggests a generalisable phenomenon where the induction of transcription causes elevated mutation rates within defining regions of promoters.