Generalized Transduction by Lytic Bacteriophages

As interest in lytic phages as antimicrobial therapies or as treatments to reduce environmental contamination with pathogenic bacteria has increased, so has the need to determine if the use of lytic phages may lead to dissemination of virulence factors through generalized transduction, as occurs with temperate phages. Here we describe simple methods we have developed to determine if a lytic phage, rV5, can mediate generalized transduction in Escherichia coli O157:H7. These sensitive methods can be easily adapted to study generalized transduction between virulent and avirulent strains of bacteria.