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 recycled 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 inhibited 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) is often used. The DNA sequence used to construct the restriction map of phage α included these mutations.

λ DNA (dam-, dcm-) was isolated from the heat-induced lysis of E. coli strain GM2163.

Applications

•Determination of activity and specificity of restriction enzymes sensitive to Dam or Dcm methylation
•Preparation of DNA molecular weight standards
•Clone

GenBank/EMBL Accession Number
J02459, M17233, M24325, V00636, X00906