🔬 Clear Mutant

Genetically altered phages that lyse bacterial lawns more fully than their wild-type parents.

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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About this entry: Clear Mutant 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
To share a particular section, use the 🔗 link beside its heading, which copies a web address that opens the page right there. To cite this page: Abedon, S.T. (2026). Phage Terms. terms.phage.org.  ·  DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.20173633

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

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Clear Mutant: Genetically altered phages that lyse bacterial lawns more fully than their wild-type parents.

Discussion

The parents of these mutants form more turbid plaques, particularly the turbid-center plaques produced by temperate phages where the clearness of the mutant’s plaques is a consequence of loss of ability to display a lysogenic cycle. That is, see virulent mutant.

Note that the rapid lysis mutants of T-even phages are not often referred to as clear mutants though in fact they too form plaques that are less turbid than the plaques formed by most wild-type T-even phages.

How to cite this page

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

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