Indicator Bacteria

Abedon, Stephen T.

doi:10.5281/zenodo.20173633

🔬 Indicator Bacteria

Bacteria mixed with phages to produce a class="bap-term">bacterial lawn and thereby support phage Plaque">plaquing.

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

About this entry: Indicator Bacteria 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

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

Indicator Bacteria: Bacteria mixed with phages to produce a class="bap-term">bacterial lawn and thereby support phage Plaque">plaquing.

Discussion

<p>Note that the bacterium hosting the initial phage infection during plaque formation need not be the same as the bacterial host serving as the indicator bacteria. Keeping these two hosts distinct allows for the design of wikipedia.org/wiki/Experiment" target="_blank" class="bap-term">experiments or assays that can yield more information than just simple plaquing. See for example efficiency of center of infection.

This is the definition from Adams (1959), p. 440, "Bacteria sensitive to a specified kind of phage, usually also resistant to other specified kinds."

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References

Adams (1959). Bacteriophages. Interscience Publishers, New York.

How to cite this page

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

[1] Adams (1959). Bacteriophages. Interscience Publishers, New York.

🔬 Indicator Bacteria

Discussion

External links

References

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