Topic
Lambda phage
About: Lambda phage is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 1609 publications have been published within this topic receiving 84675 citations. The topic is also known as: Enterobacteria phage lambda.
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TL;DR: Structural motifs provide a basis for postulating the mechanism of site-specific recombination and may also be relevant to other pathways in which two distant chromosomal sites become associated.
Abstract: The excisive recombination reaction of bacteriophage lambda involves a specific and efficient juxtaposition of two distant higher order protein-DNA complexes on the chromosome of Escherichia coli. These complexes, which mediate synapsis and strand exchange, consist of two DNA sequences, attL and attR, the bivalent DNA binding protein Int, and the sequence-specific DNA bending proteins, IHF, Xis, and Fis. The protein-protein and protein-DNA interactions within, and between, these complexes were studied by various biochemical techniques and the patterns of synergism among pairs of mutants with marginally impaired recombination function were analyzed. The DNA bending proteins facilitated long-range tethering of high- and low-affinity DNA sites by the bivalent Int protein, and a specific map is proposed for the resulting Int bridges. These structural motifs provide a basis for postulating the mechanism of site-specific recombination and may also be relevant to other pathways in which two distant chromosomal sites become associated.
126 citations
TL;DR: The DNA complement of bacteriophage lambda is infective if certain conditions of bacteria and "helper" phage are satisfied, but after infection of sensitive bacteria by lambda phage, most of the injected DNA appears to lose its infectivity, at least as measured under these conditions.
126 citations
TL;DR: It is shown that after terminase has cut cos in vivo, nucleases degrade linearized DNA only from the end that does not have a strong terminase binding site, which means linearized cosmid DNA containing chi sites in the proper orientation to the unprotected end is degraded more slowly in rec+ E. coli than is chi‐less DNA.
Abstract: In Escherichia coli, unprotected linear DNA is degraded by exoV activity of the RecBCD nuclease, a protein that plays a central role in the repair of double-strand breaks Specific short asymmetric sequences, called chi sites, are hotspots for RecBCD-promoted recombination and are shown in vitro to attenuate exoV activity To study RecBCD-chi site interactions in vivo we used phage lambda's terminase to introduce a site-specific double-strand break at lambda's cos site inserted into a plasmid We show that after terminase has cut cos in vivo, nucleases degrade linearized DNA only from the end that does not have a strong terminase binding site Linearized cosmid DNA containing chi sites in the proper orientation to the unprotected end is degraded more slowly in rec+ E coli than is chi-less DNA Increased survival of chi-containing DNA is a result of partial inactivation of exoV activity and is dependent on RecA and SSB proteins The linearization of chi-containing DNA molecules leads to RecA-dependent formation of branched structures which have been proposed as intermediates in the RecBCD pathway of double-strand break repair
125 citations
TL;DR: There are new insights into the way this structure directs critical events during recombination of bacteriophage lambda into the chromosome of E. coli.
124 citations
TL;DR: Two classes of cDNA cloning vectors are described, designed to facilitate conversion from phage lambda to plasmid clones using a genetic method based on the bacteriophage P1 site-specific recombination system and the generation of large amounts of single-stranded DNA or synthetic cRNA that can be used in subtractive hybridization procedures.
123 citations