BIOC 300D2 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Agarose, Agarose Gel Electrophoresis, Escherichia Coli
8 Jul 2016
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Document Summary
Bacteriophages are considered as episomes, since they co-replicate genome with bacterial genome. Confer certain growth properties (advantages) to bacteria that carry them (fertility, antibiotic production and resistance, virulence determinants). Extremely useful and widely used in molecular biology for: cloning dna, expressing proteins in heterologous systems, and many others. Very large variety of plasmids currently used in modern biotechnology. Aim of the next two labs is to become familiar with some of the properties of bacterial plasmids: puc19 of e. coli. F plasmid is a very large circular plasmid of 200 kb in size, capable of autonomous replication. Known as fertility (f) plasmid, as it confers to the bacterial host the capacity to mate by a process known as conjugation. Genes needed for conjugation are present on f plasmid. Conjugation involves transfer to the f plasmid from an f+ cell to an f- cell via a conjugation pilus. F+ cell synthesizes a conjugation pilus which mediates contact with the f- cell.
