Abstract
Certain temperature-sensitive sporulation mutants were used to study the sporulation process of Bacillus subtilis. Among the isolated mutants, four, spo-ts 2A, 4A, 7A, and 15A, were found to produce spores at 43° provided the medium was enriched with glutamate or aspartate (20mM) at a time before the initiation of sporulation. This effect appeared to be mutation-specific; sporulation of other spo-ts mutants was not cured by glutamate. Moreover, genetic study has indicated that 2A, 4A, and 7A mutations are clustered in the region between the purA and the novA.
