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. 1968 Jun;2(6):587–593. doi: 10.1128/jvi.2.6.587-593.1968

Relationship Between Competence for Transfection and for Transformation

Silvano Riva 1,1, Mario Polsinelli 1
PMCID: PMC375652  PMID: 4177104

Abstract

Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) extracted from phage SPP1 is highly infectious on Bacillus subtilis competent cells; the efficiency of infection is 5 × 103 to 6 × 103 phage equivalents per plaque-forming unit. This DNA was used to study the relationship between competence for transfection and for transformation. The experiments were concerned with the frequency of infection and transformation in mutants exhibiting different levels of competence, the effect of periodate on competence for infection and for transformation, the competition between phage and bacterial DNA, the transformation of cells preinfected with phage DNA, and the infection of cells pretreated with bacterial DNA. The data show that B. subtilis cells competent for transformation are also competent for transfection and vice versa; transfection with phage DNA represents, therefore, a simple way to measure the total number of competent cells in a culture. The fraction of competent cells, determined by SPP1 DNA infection, varied from 10−2 to 7 × 10−2.

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Selected References

These references are in PubMed. This may not be the complete list of references from this article.

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