Spontaneous and induced mutations to rifampicin, streptomycin and spectinomycin resistances in actinomycetes: Mutagenic mechanisms and applications for strain improvement

Abstract

Chemical mutagenesis continues to be an important foundational methodology for the generation of highly productive actinomycete strains for the commercial production of antibiotics and other secondary metabolites. In the past, the determination of frequencies of chemically induced resistance to rifampicin (RifR), spectinomycin (SpcR) and streptomycin (StrR) have served as surrogate markers to monitor the efficiencies and robustness of mutagenic protocols. Recent studies indicate that high level RifR, SpcR and StrR phenotypes map to specific regions of the rpoB, rpsE and rpsL genes, respectively, in actinomycetes. Moreover, mutagenesis to RifR can occur spontaneously at many different sites in rpoB, and all six types of base-pair substitutions, as well as in-frame deletions and insertions, have been observed. The RifR/rpoB system provides a robust method to rank mutagenic protocols, to evaluate mutagen specificity and to study spontaneous mutagenesis mechanisms involved in the maintenance of high G+C content in Streptomyces species and other actinomycetes.