Enrichment of Bacillus subtilis Transformants by Zonal Centrifugation

A COMPETENT culture of Bacillus subtilis which has been exposed to DNA consists of at least two metabolically distinct cell populations—competent cells which have taken up DNA and are

potentially transformable, and untransformable cells. The potential transformants are relatively resistant to penicillin, actinomycin D, and puromycin and appear to be non-dividing (refs,

1–3 and personal communication from H. O. Kammen, R. H. Beloff, and E. S. Canellakis). We suspected that these cells were lighter than the majority of actively dividing incompetent cells.

Zonal centrifugation of a competent culture of B. subtilis in a sucrose gradient shows that these two kinds of cells can, in fact, be separated.

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content: