Thermo Scientific λ is a mild E. coli bacteriophage. Virion DNA is linear and double-stranded (48502 bp), containing a 12 bp single-stranded complementary 5' end. After phage particles inject chromosomes into cells, the chromosomes are circularized through end-joining. In the lytic pathway, phage genes encoding replication, lysis, and virion proteins are expressed. The chromosome replicates, and the replisomes are cleaved and packaged into progeny phage particles. In the lysogenic pathway, phage gene expression is suppressed and the circular chromosome is inserted into the bacterial chromosome through recombination.

Features
Bacteriophage lambda DNA is a common substrate for restriction endonucleases and the generation of DNA size marker fragments. For large-scale isolation of phage DNA, cI857Sam7 (a mutant carrying 4 known mutations) was used. The DNA sequence used to construct the restriction map of phage α included these mutations.

Applications

•Determination of activity and specificity of restriction enzymes
•Preparation of DNA molecular weight standards
•Cloning
< br>GenBank/EMBL Accession Number
NC_001416, M17233, M24325, V00636, X00906