Protein fusion: a novel reaction in bacteriophage lambda head assembly.

Parts of two phage-coded head proteins, pE and pC, become fused during bacteriophage lambda head assembly. pE is the main structural component of lambda heads and pC is a minor head protein that is not found as such in mature heads. The bond joining the two proteins appears to be covalent and is not a disulfide bond. Only a specific subset of the sequences of each protein is found in the fusion products, and these sequences are found in the products in equimolar amounts. Two nearly identical fusion products; X1 and X2, are detected; X2 is slightly smaller than X1 and appears to be a proteolytic cleavage product of X1. The fusion reaction probably takes place on a nascent head structure.