by Stephen T. Abedon Ph.D. Steve Abedon, Ph.D., has taught well over 100 individual classes and ~10 individual courses (including introductory biology, microbiology, physiology, biochemistry, etc.) over his 30+ years as a college professor. He has over 150 publications, including multiple monographs, and is ranked in the top 1 or 2 percent among researchers of all disciplines worldwide. His research focuses on bacteriophage biology and phage therapy. (abedon.1@osu.edu)
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phage.org/terms/antirestriction.html · Abedon’s Books · DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.20173633
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This is other than the infrequent epigenetic modifications of the phage DNA such that it is recognized, essentially, as bacterial self DNA rather than as foreign DNA. It is also other than having genomes that do not possess restriction enzyme recognition sequences, though that also serves phages as a means of avoiding restriction by restriction endonucleases.
Antirestriction mechanisms are mediated by phage gene products that act either during the synthesis step of infections, thereby effecting antirestriction during a subsequent 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) obscuring of recognition sequences through phage-mediated DNA modification, (3) interference with the action of endonucleases prior to enzyme-DNA interaction, and (4) by chance bacteria-mediated modification of phage DNA prior to restriction by the same bacterium’s restriction endonuclease enzymes.
Abedon, S.T. (2026). Phage Terms. https://terms.phage.org · 10.5281/zenodo.20173633
Every term in the Glossary of Bacteriophage Terms. The current page is highlighted purple.