๐Ÿ”ฌ Antirestriction

Mechanisms used by phages to resist the action of class="bap-term">restriction endonucleases.

by Stephen T. Abedon Ph.D. (abedon.1@osu.edu)

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About this entry: Antirestriction is one of a growing set of phage biology and phage therapy terms defined here. For more phage terms, see Abedon, S.T. (2025). Phage Therapy Annotated Glossary. Preprints.org. 10.20944/preprints202508.0347.v1

phage.org/terms/antirestriction.html  ·  Abedon’s Books  ·  DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.20173633

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Antirestriction: Mechanisms used by phages to resist the action of class="bap-term">restriction endonucleases.

Discussion

<p>Antirestriction mechanisms are mediated by phage gene products that act either during the synthesis step of infections, thereby effecting antirestriction during the following infection (particularly by modifying phage DNA), or involve processes by which restriction endonucleases are more actively thwarted during the infection process prior to nucleic acid replication and virion assembly.

There thus are four basic mechanisms by which restriction by restriction endonucleases can be avoided: (1) mutational elimination of recognition sequences, (2) obscurance of recognition sequences through phage-mediated DNA modification, (3) interfere with the action of endonucleases but prior to enzyme-DNA interaction, and (4) by chance bacteria-mediated wikipedia.org/wiki/Restriction_modification_system" class="bap-term" target=_blank>modification of phage DNA prior to restriction by the same bacteriumย’s restriction endonuclease enzymes.

External links

How to cite this page

Abedon, S.T. (2026). Phage Terms. https://terms.phage.org  ·  10.5281/zenodo.20173633

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Antirestriction — terms.phage.orgphage.org — Stephen T. Abedon — Version 2026.05.14