Chapter category: Viruses

DNA Packaging by Bacteriophage P22

This chapter appears in the following book:

Viral Genome Packaging Machines: Genetics, Structure
and Mechanism

Edited by: Carlos Catalano
ISBN: 0-306-48227-4
» Get more information about this book at landesbioscience.com «

Chapter authors:
Sherwood Casjens and Peter Weigele

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Bacteriophage P22 was isolated by Zinder and Lederberg1 a half century ago, and was immediately put to work by Salmonella bacterial geneticists because of its unusual (at that time) DNA packaging properties. It was the first generalized transducing phage to be discovered – a small fraction (~2%2) of its virions carry a fragment of the host DNA instead of phage DNA, and this host DNA can be delivered into a host cell. Subsequently it has become one of the paradigm molecular genetic systems for understanding the lifecycles of temperate phages.3,4 P22 virions contain partially circularly permuted (see below for details) and 3.8% terminally redundant dsDNA molecules about 43,400 bp long,5 have very short tails6 and infect smooth (O-antigen surface polysaccharide carrying) strains of Salmonella typhimurium. The many conditional lethal mutations isolated in P22 allowed the delineation of its assembly pathway over a quarter century ago.

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Chapter category: Viruses

DNA Packaging by Bacteriophage P22

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