Effect of change in structure of cohesive ends on aggregating ability and biological activity of bacteriophage lambda DNA.

The effect of different types of buildup of the cohesive ends on the ability of phage lambda DNA molecules to form cyclic and concatemeric forms and on their biological activity in two infection systems--transfection and transformation--was investigated with the aid of E. coli DNA polymerase. A change in the structure of the cohesive ends leads to a change in the aggregating ability of the phage lambda DNA molecules up to an almost complete loss of this ability. The infectious activity of phage lambda DNA in the transfection system is very sensitive to a change in structure of the cohesive ends. It is suggested that phage development in this system requires retention of the ability to form cyclic or concatemeric forms. In the transformation system molecules with any of the modifications of the cohesive ends differ insignificantly from one another in infectivity. This can be attributed to the important role of recombination processes, which can save the defective DNA markers. DNAs with completely normal cohesive ends behave in the transformation system like phage lambda DNA fragments from internal parts of the molecule. No polarity of the cohesive ends is found when phage lambda develops in systems with or without a helper phage.