Talk:Lambda phage

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I reverted the move, because the new title got far fewer hits on a Google Test search, and the mover had not changed any inbound links. Most biologists I know usually refer to it as "lambda phage", and it should be so-titled on Wikipedia. The full title can be given in the lead text, but it's wikipedia convention to use the most common term for an article (e.g. Bill Clinton versus William Clinton). --Lexor|Talk 09:00, Oct 12, 2004 (UTC)

The discussion seems to be overly technical in places. Also, is point 7 under Lifestyle backwards? It seems to say it will lyse unstressed cells and integrate into stressed cells. 24.18.247.19 22:50, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

I think point 7 is correct, shough i am not 100% certain... any other input would be welcome.

Nah, I think point 7 is wrong. Particularly when u consider the fact that if bacteriophage lambda has intergrated a cell via the lysogenic pathway it will change to the lytic pathway if the cell becomes stressed. The process is called induction. Plus, it makes no sense logically, why would it want to integrate into a dying cell? once that cell's dead it can no longer reproduce. Hence the process of induction to lyse any dying cells it is integrated into the chromosome of. --81.109.113.201 16:44, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

I think that the article is wrong about the function of pQ and pN in antitermination. In fact, they allow antitermination by allowing RNA polymerase to bypass terminator regions and not stop codons (which usually have no influence on transcription) Ilyas1978 06:26, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

Ilyas1978 is correct, these descriptions are incorrect. Stop codons are recognized during translation, not transcription (RNA Polymerase doesn't even know what a codon is). The transcriptional stop inhibition, if it really does occur, must be performed in some other manner (i.e., it causes RNAPol to ignore rho sites, which are transcription stop sequences). -- Josh 19:22, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

• Please see this PDF file for information on this (Ilyas is right). I wish I could use some of the images, but they are undoubtedly non-free. --N Shar 01:22, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Re: point 7 (Lifestyle)

The statement is correct but confusing. When the phage first encounters the cell and all its genes are expressed, the activity of cII depends on the amount of nutrients available, because this controls protease activity. If nutrients are abundant, the proteases actively cleave cII and cause a lytic cycle (counterproductive, perhaps, but evolution does not result in the best possible organism). If nutrients are sparse, cII is not cleaved and the lysogenic cycle begins.

Later, however, when the lysogen is "stressed" by UV light, cI is cleaved by the bacterial protein RecA and the lytic cycle is induced. This is the reverse of what happens initially.

Perhaps it would be best to remove all occurances of the word "stressed" to clarify this. I may do this later when I can log in. --67.125.30.232 17:58, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Done. I'm not sure I did a good job, so if anyone wants to look at it.... --N Shar 01:17, 27 October 2006 (UTC)