๐Ÿ”ฌ Virulent Mutant

Temperate phage that has genetically lost its ability to lysogenize.

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

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About this entry: Virulent Mutant 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

phage.org/terms/virulent_mutant.html  ·  Abedon’s Books  ·  DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.20173633

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Virulent Mutant: Temperate phage that has genetically lost its ability to lysogenize.

Discussion

<p>Ecologically, this distinction is important in terms of the survival of homoimmune lysogens, which are safe from lytic infection by vir mutants unless phages lose their ability to be impacted by the resident prophageย’s repressor. With phage lambda this loss requires two independent mutations, i.e., in two separate operator sequences. Due to the rarity of double mutants, prophages can remain relatively safe from being exploited by their own mutant descendants.

See also the concept of phage virulence, which with phages is a broader concept than that of "virulent" as used here.

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How to cite this page

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

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Virulent Mutant — terms.phage.org — phage.org — Stephen T. Abedon — Version 2026.05.14