Question

If you were a phage and during an infectious cycle you wanted to stop your host bacterial cell from growing, what essential cellular process would you target and why?

Answer 1

The cellular process or pathway that a phage would apply to stop the growth of the bacterial cells is the lytic cells. This is applied because during the lytic cycle, after the assembly of the phage particles and its growth, after their maturation they are released out of the bacterial cells through lysis. There are couple of steps through which the phage enters their host and starts the lytic cycle which are:-

Attachment – In this process, the phage binds to the cell surface of the bacterial cells with help of proteins that are present in the tail of the phage. These are basically some type of sugar transporter which adheres to the bacterial cell.

Penetration – The phage after the attachments penetrates into the host bacterial cell by rupturing the cell wall. The penetration is followed by synthesis of proteins and DNA.

Protein synthesis and DNA replication – With the host cells it starts the production of the early and late proteins as well as start the replication of DNA.

Assembly – In the assembly process, the head binds to the tail and the head is bound by the capsid proteins. This leads to the maturation of the viral particles.

Lysis – This is the final step where the mature viral particles are produced and they are released out of the bacteria leading to killing of the bacteria.