Bacteriophage lambda: alive and well and still doing its thing

The lambda (h) family of bacteriophages continues to provide significant in sights into the understanding of basic biological processes, as well as use ful technological innovations. Areas in which recent advances have occurred include transcription elongation, repressor interactions, genomics and pos ttranscriptional regulation. The homologous lambda recombination functions have been exploited as an efficient in vivo recombinant engineering system for functional genomic studies. The virulence of some pathogenic strains of Escherichia coli is enhanced by the expression of Shiga toxin (stx) genes encoded on a resident lambdoid prophage. Recent work suggests that the phag e regulatory network may be a significant contributor to toxin production a nd release by these pathogenic E. coli.