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Structural model at atomic resolution of bacteriophage T4 [1] The structure of a typical myovirus bacteriophage Anatomy and infection cycle of bacteriophage T4.. A bacteriophage (/ b æ k ˈ t ɪər i oʊ f eɪ dʒ /), also known informally as a phage (/ ˈ f eɪ dʒ /), is a virus that infects and replicates within bacteria and archaea.
Phage therapy is the use of bacteriophages to treat bacterial infections. Bacteriophage treatment offers a possible alternative to conventional antibiotic treatments for bacterial infection. [55] It is conceivable that, although bacteria can develop resistance to phages, the resistance might be easier to overcome than resistance to antibiotics.
For phage, virulence results either in reduction of bacterial division rates or, more typically, in the death (via lysis) of individual bacteria. A number of theory papers exist on this subject, especially as it applies to the evolution of phage latent period .
The phage group started around 1940, after Delbrück and Luria had met at a physics conference. Delbrück and Salvador Luria began a series of collaborative experiments on the patterns of infection for different strains of bacteria and bacteriophage. They soon established the "mutual exclusion principle" that an individual bacterium can only be ...
The phage coats remained on the outside of the bacteria, while genetic material entered. Disruption of phage from the bacteria by agitation in a blender followed by centrifugation allowed for the separation of the phage coats from the bacteria. These bacteria were lysed to release phage progeny. The progeny of the phages that were labeled with ...
The two ends of the phage are capped by a few copies of proteins that are important for infection of the host bacteria, and also for assembly of nascent phage particles. These proteins are the products of phage genes 3 and 6 at one end of the phage, and phage genes 7 and 9 at the other end.
In a 1945 study by Demerec and Fano, [4] T7 was used to describe one of the seven phage types (T1 to T7) that grow lytically on Escherichia coli. [5] Although all seven phages were numbered arbitrarily, phages with odd numbers, or T-odd phages, were later discovered to share morphological and biochemical features that distinguish them from T-even phages. [6]
The phage is covered by a protective protein coat. The T2 phage can quickly turn an E. coli cell into a T2-producing factory that releases phages when the cell ruptures. Experiments conducted in 1952 by Alfred Hershey and Martha Chase demonstrated how the DNA of viruses is injected into the bacterial cells, while most of the viral proteins ...