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Phage sequences in bacterial genomes
Spreading the tools of death
 New phage from the ashes of old?
You aim to find out.
You construct a mutant strain of E. coli EDL933 in which the 5' end of prophage gene L0121 has been removed and replaced with an antibiotic resistance gene. The prophage can still excise from the chromosome, replicate, package, and lyse the host, but the resulting phage particles are noninfective due to the lack of a functional tail fiber.
However, you observe that rare phage in the lysate are able to infect E. coli, and you hypothesize that they are the result of recombination between the now defective prophage 933W and the always defective cryptic prophage. Recombination may lead to phage DNA that has a reconstructed tail fiber gene.
How can you test this hypothesis?
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