The Intracellular Growth of Bacteriophages

The growth of the virus T3 has been followed by breaking up the complexes it forms with host cells at various stages in their development and then assaying the debris for active virus particles. Two independent methods for breaking up cells were used: sonic vibration and lysis by the T6-cyanide method previously used for the study of the growth of T4. During the first half of the latent period both treatments, as well as cyanide alone, destroyed the capacity of the complexes for producing daughter virus particles. Furthermore, the infecting particles could not be recovered from them during the first half of the latent period. After the complexes had had 12 minutes of incubation at 30 degrees C. both methods freed daughter virus particles from them in numbers which increased steadily with time until, near the end of the rise period, the normal burst size was reached. In general the agreement between the two yields is so good that one may conclude that both methods liberate quantitatively the mature daughter T3 particles which exist in the complexes before normal lysis occurs.