We measured the kinetics of growth and mutagenesis of UV-irradiated DNA of phages S13 and A that were undergoing SOS repair; the kinetics strongly suggest that most of SOS mutagenesis arises from the deamination of cytosine in cyclobutane pyrimidine dimers, producing C -3 T transitions. This occurs because the SOS mechanism bypasses T'T dimers promptly, while bypass of cytosine-containing dimers is delayed long enough for deamination to occur. The mutations are thus primarily the product of a faithful mechanism of lesion bypass by a DNA polymerase and are not, as had been generally thought, the product of an error-prone mechanism. All of these observations are explained by the A-rule, which is that adenine nucleotides are inserted noninstructionally opposite DNA lesions.SOS repair and SOS mutagenesis were discovered nearly 40 years ago by Jean Weigle, who observed that preirradiation of the bacterial host increased survival of UV-irradiated phage A (1). When applied to phage DNA these SOS phenomena are now called Weigle reactivation and Weigle mutagenesis; their mechanism has thus been an intriguing puzzle for some time. We show here that the primary, but not the sole, mechanism of UV mutagenesis in phages S13 and A is simply the spontaneous deamination of cytosine in cyclobutane pyrimidine dimers. This deamination occurs during a deliberate, and arguably an unnecessary, delay in the bypass of the lesion by DNA polymerase; the delay is caused by cytosine-containing dimers, possibly because of the mispairing of the cytosine with adenine. SOS repair is induced by damage to DNA. In Escherichia coli, the damage results in an activated form of the RecA protein, which can mediate the cleavage of LexA, the repressor ofthe SOS regulon. The principal known components of the repair system are the products of the recA and the umuDC genes. The activated RecA protein is needed for cleavage of the UmuD protein to produce UmuD', the active C-terminal fragment (2-4). The RecA protein can also be activated by mutations designated recA(Prtc) to what is termed the protease constitutive state (5); with mutants such as recAl202(Prtc) and recAJ237(Prtc), which were used in the work described here, Weigle reactivation is achieved without irradiation of the host cell.It is generally thought that a high frequency of erroneous base pairing during DNA synthesis opposite the distorted lesion is responsible for the mutagenesis that accompanies SOS repair, and that idea has evoked the term error-prone repair. We propose, instead, that most, though certainly not all, ofthe mutations arise through accurate base pairing-i.e., an error-free bypass mechanism. This paradox will be resolved by the fact that mutations can arise by deamination of cytosine in cyclobutane dimers; if the uracils formed are read correctly during bypass of the dimers, adenines would be found in the newly synthesized complementary strand. If there is adequate time for deamination to occur, and that is the very central issue here, bypass of lesions will usually invo...