Q.What role do temperate phages play in transduction?
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Start your 14-day free trial to unlock the full solution →Temperate phages are able to integrate their DNA into a host bacterium's chromosome as a prophage, where it is replicated harmlessly along with the host's own DNA over many generations. When conditions later trigger the prophage to leave this integrated state and switch to the lytic cycle, it must excise itself from the host chromosome; in doing so, it occasionally makes an imprecise cut and carries away a small piece of the bacterial DNA that had been sitting next to it on the chromosome, packaging this piece of host DNA together with its own phage genome into the new phage particles that are then produced. If one of these phage particles subsequently infects a different bacterial cell, it injects not only its own phage DNA but also the borrowed piece of the previous host's bacterial DNA into the new cell, effectively transferring genetic material from one bacterium to another via the phage. This entire process is what is meant by transduction, and it is only possible because temperate p …
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