The process of infection with bacteriophage phiX174. 8. Evidence for an essential bacterial "site".

The burst of a starved bacterium infected with several øX174 bacteriophage was usually found to contain genetic traits of only one of the possible parents; less often, two phage multiplied in the same host cell. Unstarved cells, in contrast, supported the growth of at least four parental phage types. The unproductive phage seemed to be able to undergo the intracellular transition from parental single-stranded deoxyribonucleic acid to the double-stranded "replicative form" (RF). These results are taken to mean that some bacterial factor required for a step between RF synthesis and maturation of progeny is limited in starved cells.