๐Ÿ”ฌ Immunity

Prevention of infection of a lysogen by additional temperate phages as mediated by a prophage of the same immunity type.

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

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About this entry: Immunity 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/immunity.html  ·  Abedon’s Books  ·  DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.20173633

How can I improve this page?  contact: terms@phage.org

Immunity: Prevention of infection of a lysogen by additional temperate phages as mediated by a prophage of the same immunity type.

Discussion

<p>Immunity should not be confused with exclusion, that is, class="bap-term">superinfection exclusion, which is a means by which phages prevent the viral+uptake" class="bap-term">uptake of phage nucleic acid into already phage-infected bacteria. Immunity, by contrast, wikipedia.org/wiki/Function_(biology)" target="_blank" class="bap-term">functions against nucleic acid that is already found within the infected bacterium's cytoplasm.

This is the definition from Adams (1959), p. 440, "Resistance to infection that does not result from failure of the phage to adsorb and inject, characteristically associated with the Lysogenic cycle">lysogenic state." Alternatively, from Gill and Young (2011), p. 402,"Bacterial insensitivity to a phage caused by lysogeny of the cell by the same or related phage; this term only relates to temperate phages."

External links

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References

  • Adams (1959). Bacteriophages. Interscience Publishers, New York.
  • Gill and Young (2011).

How to cite this page

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

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Immunity — terms.phage.org — phage.org — Stephen T. Abedon — Version 2026.05.14