Transduction of Lysogeny in Escherichia co/i 



Francois Jacob 



Service de Physiologie microhienne, Institut Pasteur, Paris 

 Received, March 2, 1955 



SUMMARY 



Transduction provides a new tool for a genetic analysis of lysogeny. Re- 

 cently, transduction has been shown by Lennox to occur, through phage PI, in 

 various strains of Escherichia coli. Another strain of temperate phage has been 

 isolated, which is also able to transfer genetic characters from a donor to an 

 acceptor strain of E. coli K12. Linked characters can be transduced simul- 

 taneously. Lysogeny or nonlysogeny, with respect to each of three different 

 prophages is transduced together with a galactose marker, to which these 

 three prophages are linked as shown by bacterial recombination evidence. 

 When two geneticallj^ different and complementary prophages — one in the 

 donor and one in the acceptor cells — are used in transduction experiments, 

 recombination of prophages has been shown to occur. 



INTRODUCTION 



A new mechanism allowing the transfer of genetic characters from 

 one bacterial strain to another was found in Salmonella by Zinder and 

 Lederberg (1952). This mechanism, for which the term "transduction" 

 was coined, appears to involve phage particles as vectors of the genetic 

 material of the bacteria (Zinder, 1953; Stocker et al., 1953). Transduction 

 can be observed when phage-sensitive bacteria, acting as acceptor cells, 

 are infected with phage particles grown on donor bacteria which differ 

 from the acceptor by one or several genetic characters. Some of the in- 

 fected bacteria that survive phage infection acquire and transmit to 

 their progeny one or several characters of the donor strain. The trans- 

 ducing ability seems to be restricted to some strains of temperate phages. 



It has recently been shown by Lennox (1955) that phage PI is able 

 to transduce various markers from one strain of E. coli to another and 

 that linked characters can be transduced together. This finding makes 

 it possible to compare linkage data provided by transduction and by 

 bacterial recombination which was demonstrated by Tatum and Leder- 

 berg (1947) to occur in strain K12 of E. coli. 



Reprinted by permission of the author and Academic Press, Inc. 

 from Virology, 1 (2), 207-220 (1955). 



339 



