Phagemid

A phagemid or phasmid is a type of cloning vector developed as a hybrid of the filamentous phage M13 and plasmids to produce a vector that can grow as a plasmid, and also be packaged as single stranded DNA in viral particles. Phagemids contain an origin of replication (ori) for double stranded replication, as well as an f1 ori to enable single stranded replication and packaging into phage particles. Many commonly used plasmids contain an f1 ori and are thus phagemids. Similarly to a plasmid, a phagemid can be used to clone DNA fragments and be introduced into a bacterial host by a range of techniques (transformation, electroporation). However, infection of a bacterial host containing a phagemid with a 'helper' phage, for example VCSM13 or M13K07, provides the necessary viral components to enable single stranded DNA replication and packaging of the phagemid DNA into phage particles. These are secreted through the cell wall and released into the medium. Filamentous phage retard bacterial growth but, in contrast to lambda and T7 phage, are not generally lytic. Helper phage are usually engineered to package less efficiently than the phagemid so that the resultant phage particles contain predominantly phagemid DNA. F1 Filamentous phage infection requires the presence of a pilus so only bacterial hosts containing the F-plasmid or its derivatives can be used to generate phage particles. Prior to the development of cycle sequencing phagemids were used to generate single stranded DNA template for sequencing purposes. Today phagemids are still useful for generating templates for site-directed mutagenesis. Detailed characterisation of the filamentous phage life cycle and structural features lead to the development of phage display technology, in which a range of peptides and proteins can be expressed as fusions to phage coat proteins and displayed on the viral surface. The displayed peptides and polypeptides are associated with the corresponding coding DNA within the phage particle and so this technique lends itself to the study of protein-protein interactions and other ligand/receptor combinations.