1887

Journal of General Virology header logo

Volume 58, Issue 1

Condensed DNA Structures Derived from Bacteriophage Heads Free

Abstract

SUMMARY

Bacteriophage λ particles were rendered osmotically fragile by incubation, spread over hypophase and examined by electron microscopy. When water was used as hypophase, condensed structures were released from the phage heads and treatment of these with cytochrome or several alternative proteins resulted in the release of free, relaxed DNA. Phage were pretreated with nitrogen mustard, a bifunctional alkylating agent; when the condensed structures from such phage particles were treated with protein, DNA was released in small supercoiled domains. This confirmed a previous finding that bacteriophage DNA has a supercoiled topology and suggests that the winding pattern of DNA in the phage might involve small domains of coiled DNA analogous to nucleosomes. Such a conformation could be consistent with other studies on the arrangement of DNA in phage heads if the domains have parallel axes.

  • Received:
  • Accepted:
  • Published Online:
Keyword(s): bacteriophage , cross-linking , DNA and supercoiling
© Journal of General Virology 1982
Loading

Article metrics loading...

/content/journal/jgv/10.1099/0022-1317-58-1-181
1982-01-01
2024-04-19
Loading full text...

Full text loading...

/deliver/fulltext/jgv/58/1/JV0580010181.html?itemId=/content/journal/jgv/10.1099/0022-1317-58-1-181&mimeType=html&fmt=ahah

References

  1. Davis R. W., Simon M., Davison N. 1971; Electron microscope heteroduplex methods for mapping regions of base sequence homology in nucleic acids. Methods in Enzymology 21:413–428
     [Google Scholar]
  2. Earnshaw W. C., Casjens S. R. 1980; DNA packaging by the double-stranded DNA bacteriophages. Cell 21:319–331
     [Google Scholar]
  3. Earnshaw W. C., Harrison S. C. 1977; DNA arrangement in isometric phage heads. Nature, London 268:598–602
     [Google Scholar]
  4. Eickbush T. H., Moundrianakis E. N. 1978; The compactation of DNA helices into either continuous supercoils or folded fiber rods and toroids. Cell 13:295–306
     [Google Scholar]
  5. Goldberg A. R., Howe M. 1969; New mutation in the S cistron of bacteriophage lambda affecting host cell lysis. Virology 38:203–212
     [Google Scholar]
  6. Hohn B. 1979; In vitro packaging of A and cosmid DNA. Methods in Enzymology 68:299–309
     [Google Scholar]
  7. Kleinschmidt A. K. 1968; Monolayer techniques in the electron microscopy of nucleic acid molecules. Methods in Enzymology 12B:361–376
     [Google Scholar]
  8. Kosturko L. D., Hogan M., Dattagupta N. 1979; Structure of DNA within three isometric bacteriophages. Cell 16:515–522
     [Google Scholar]
  9. Laskey R. A., Earnshaw W. C. 1980; Nucleosome assembly. Nature, London 286:763–767
     [Google Scholar]
  10. Lawley P. D., Brookes P. 1963; Further studies on the alkylation of nucleic acids and their constituent nucleotides. Biochemical Journal S 9:127–138
     [Google Scholar]
  11. Rodrigues F. K., Virrankoski-Castrodeza V., Parish J. H., Grimm K. 1980; Isolation and characterisation of new bacteriophages for Myxococcus xanthus. Archives of Microbiology 126:175–180
     [Google Scholar]
  12. Virrankoski-Castrodeza V., Parish J. H. 1980; Evidence for supercoiling in the DNA of bacteriophage heads. Archives of Microbiology 126:277–283
     [Google Scholar]
  13. Worcel A., Strongats S., Reiley D. 1981; Structure of chromatin and the linking number of DNA. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 78:1461–1465
     [Google Scholar]
http://instance.metastore.ingenta.com/content/journal/jgv/10.1099/0022-1317-58-1-181
Loading
Condensed DNA Structures Derived from Bacteriophage Heads
J. Gen. Virol. 58, 181 (1982); https://doi.org/10.1099/0022-1317-58-1-181
/content/journal/jgv/10.1099/0022-1317-58-1-181
/content/journal/jgv/10.1099/0022-1317-58-1-181
Loading

Data & Media loading...

Most cited Most Cited RSS feed

This is a required field
Please enter a valid email address
Approval was a Success
Invalid data
An Error Occurred
Approval was partially successful, following selected items could not be processed due to error