Moving through the membrane with filamentous phages

Abstract

Filamentous phages are small, highly evolved parasites that can reproduce and disseminate without killing their host. During assembly, virion proteins are transferred from the host membrane to the single-stranded DNA phase genome and simultaneously secreted from the cell. Filamentous phage assembly shares certain features with bacterial processes responsible for the assembly of cell-surface structures and for extracellular protein secretion.