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/phage_population_growth.html · Abedon’s Books · DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.20173633
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In broth media phage population growth can result, ultimately, in infection of a majority of co-cultured phage-susceptible bacteria. Such an outcome is not a necessary consequence of phage population growth. This is because there exists a distinction between increases in virion numbers and increases in virion numbers to the point where encounter with most bacteria within a culture is likely.
In agar-based media, phage population growth can be seen as phage plaque formation. Here a substantial fraction of phage-susceptible bacteria can become phage infected; this is because constraints on phage diffusion can result in phage concentration, in the course of population growth, to densities that indeed are capable of resulting in substantial bacterial eradication, at least locally.
Note that phage population growth need not result in increases in virion number. One, in fact, can distinguish phage population growth into what can be described as bacteria-like, as displayed by prophages, and virion-like, as displayed in the course of productive phage infections.
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.