The discovery of an extraordinarily high level of mobile elements in the genome of Wolbachia, a widespread arthropod and nematode endosymbiont, suggests that this bacterium could be an excellent model for assessing the evolution and function of mobile DNA in specialized bacteria. In this paper, we discuss how studies on the temperate bacteriophage WO of Wolbachia have revealed unexpected levels...

The reversibility of DNA melting has been thoroughly investigated at different ionic strengths. We concentrated on those stages of the process that do not involve a complete separation of the strands of the double helix. The differential melting curves of pBR 322 DNA and a fragment of T7 phage DNA in a buffer containing 0.02M Na+ have been shown to differ substantially from the differential cur...

A cloned segment of yeast DNA containing the structural gene for imidazoleglycerolphosphate dehydratase (D-erythro-imidazoleglycerolphosphate hydro-lase, EC 4.2.1.19) is transcribed and translated in Escherichia coli with sufficient fidelity to produce functional enzyme. This segment of yeast DNA was isolated as a viable molecular hybrid of bacteriophage lambda (lambdagt-Sc2601) which complemen...

Use of a reference material proposed by the International Federation of Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine to evaluate analytical methods for the determination of plasma lipoprotein(a). Relationship of non-LDL-bound apo(a), urinary apo(a) fragments and plasma Lp(a) in patients with impaired renal function. Plasma Lp(a) concentration is inversely correlated with the ratio of kringle IV/k...

E. coli cells lysogenic for the thermoinducible prophage lambdacI857 can be transiently induced by a brief heat treatment. Although this treatment does not kill the cells, some lambda products normally formed during vegetative phage development are made that can alter the response of host cells to x-irradiation by causing an increase in radioresistance. This increased resistance is particularly...

The increased prevalence of multidrug-resistant bacterial pathogens motivated us to attempt to enhance the therapeutic efficacy of bacteriophages. The therapeutic application of phages as antibacterial agents was impeded by several factors: (i) the failure to recognize the relatively narrow host range of phages; (ii) the presence of toxins in crude phage lysates; and (iii) a lack of appreciatio...

The display of peptides or proteins on the surface of viruses is an important technology for studying peptides or proteins and their interaction with other molecules. Here we describe a display vehicle based on bacteriophage lambda that incorporates a number of features distinct from other currently used display systems. Fusions of peptides or protein domains have been made to the amino terminu...

Replication-dependent chromosomal breakage suggests that replication forks occasionally run into nicks in template DNA and collapse, generating double-strand ends. To model replication fork collapse in vivo, I constructed phage lambda chromosomes carrying the nicking site of M13 bacteriophage and infected with these substrates Escherichia coli cells, producing M13 nicking enzyme. I detected dou...