phs Locus of Escherichia coli, a mutation causing pleiotropic lesions in metabolism, is an rpoA allele

The phs mutation, which causes a pleiotropic growth defect, has been mapped and shown to be an allele of rpoA, the gene for the alpha subunit of RNA polymerase. The mutation is shown to cause a transcription defect in the arabinose operon, araBAD.