🔬 Eclipse

Discussion

<p>The eclipse, by necessity, ends after genome replication starts (since mature virions must possess genomes that are the product of that replication) and also ends after the beginning of the virion maturation process (since mature virions, as products of multi-step maturation processes, will appear only subsequent to the beginning virion maturation within infected bacteria). The eclipse, nonetheless, is a useful measure of how early during infections these processes begin (and, less directly, is employed to determine how fast maturation progresses once it has begun).

This is the definition from Adams (1959), p. 439, for "Eclipse period": "Elapsed time between infection or induction and the first appearance of infective phage particles in cells, as determined by artificial lysis. The eclipse period of individual cells is variable; that of the culture may be defined as the time required to produce an average of one phage per bacterium. The eclipse period is usually 1/2 to 3/4 of the minimum latent period."

See also Adolescent period">adolescent and juvenile periods as descriptors that attempt to associate the phage eclipse with life stages of other, non-virus organisms.

For additional discussion of the eclipse, along with references, see nih.gov/pubmed/19066822" target="_blank" class="bap-term">Hyman and Abedon (2009).

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References

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