T phage?

[Michael Benedik]

In article <27l3u6$l7 at usenet.INS.CWRU.Edu>, ram3 at po.CWRU.Edu (Russell A. Maurer) writes:
>
>In a previous article, ralston at ROCKVAX.ROCKEFELLER.EDU () says:
>
>>I have recently purchased a tobacco genomic library, which
>>when plated gives rise to 1-5 large plaques per 50,000
>>lambda plaques.  These large plaques are evident hours
>>before (>6 h) the lambda plaques and grow in size to 4-5 mm
>>by 9 hours.
>>
>>Others in our lab suggest that these may be T phage and that
>>T phage get absolutely everywhere.  So, ...
>>1)  Anyone out there ever see this with Clontech libraries
>>        before?  They told me that it has happend in the past.
>>2)  Is it definately T phage?
>>3)  Are T phage really as horrible as I've heard?
>>4)  Dare I make filters from the plated library (I am also
>>        screening a cDNA library, which I definately don't
>>        want to contaminate)?
>>5)  If it is T phage, how can I get rid of it? 
>>
>>Thanks in advance,
>>
>>Diana Horvath
>>ralston at rockvax.rockefeller.edu
>>
>I'll echo the comments of others and add a thing or two of my own.  Yes,
>there are T1-resistant mutants, at least two loci: tonA and tonB.  C600 and
>its derivatives are but one famous T1-resistant family.  Does anyone
>besides me remember that Luria & Delbruck's fluctuation experiment involved
>the counting of T1-resistant mutants???  What a great topic for the 50th
>anniversary of a great experiment!
>
>We had a T1 contamination when I was a student.  To counter it, we mounted
>a UV bulb somewhere in the room, shielded from below (i.e., so it shined
>upwards, away from people and experiments).  We left it on all the time. 
>As the dust floated past the light, the adsorbed T1 would be inactivated. 
>I have no idea whether this was environmentally responsible, or effective,
>but the contamination eventually subsided.
>
>The story that I was told was that a researcher once requested some T1 and
>received a letter, politely refusing the request.  However, the recipient
>was easily able to elute some phage from the envelope (or stationery).  Can
>anyone fill in the details?
>
>Russ Maurer


I thought that (probably apocryphal) story was about filamentous phage
and not T1. But who knows, I wasn't born yet.

Mike

----------------------------------------------------------------------
 Michael Benedik				INTERNET: Benedik at uh.edu
 Dept. of Biochemical & Biophysical Sciences	
 University of Houston				BITNET: Benedik at uhou
-----------------------------------------------------------------------