Lytic-Lysogeny Decision

Abedon, Stephen T.

doi:10.5281/zenodo.20173633

🔬 Lytic-Lysogeny Decision

Post genome uptake into a now class="bap-term">phage-infected bacterium, a temperate phage must literally choose between displaying two distinct life styles: productive versus reductive.

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

About this entry: Lytic-Lysogeny Decision 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

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Lytic-Lysogeny Decision: Post genome uptake into a now class="bap-term">phage-infected bacterium, a temperate phage must literally choose between displaying two distinct life styles: productive versus reductive.

Discussion

<p>Though not necessarily universally appreciated, in fact most lytic-lysogeny decisions, at least in the laboratory, seem to result in lytic cycles rather than lysogenic cycles. In other words, temperate phages in many instances can be viewed first as lytic phages and only relatively rarely do they display lysogenic cycles. To a degree this makes sense ecologically since the fact that a phage has found a bacterium is, on average, consistent with a potential for the virion progeny of those phages to also find a bacterium to successfully infect.

For reviews providing discussion of the lytic-lysogeny decision, see Little (2005), Ptashne (2004), etc.

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References

Little (2005).

How to cite this page

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

[1] Little (2005).

🔬 Lytic-Lysogeny Decision

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