Temperate

Temperate

Temperate refers to a type of virus that has a lifecycle allowing it to either reside within the genome of its host through lysogeny or enter into a lytic phase. This type of virus can enter lysogeny when its host cell becomes metabolically less active or dormant.From: Scientific and Technical Terms in Bioengineering and Biological Engineering [2018], Incorporating viruses into soil ecology: A new dimension to understand biogeochemical cycling [2023]

Glossary of scientific and technical terms in bioengineering and biological engineering

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Published in Megh R. Goyal, Scientific and Technical Terms in Bioengineering and Biological Engineering, 2018

Megh R. Goyal

Lambda phage (also called, Enterobacteria phage λ, coliphage λ) is a bacterial virus, or bacteriophage, that infects the bacterial species Escherichia coli (E. coli). This virus has a temperate lifecycle that allows it to either reside within the genome of its host through lysogeny or enter into a lytic phase (during which it kills and lyses the cell to produce offspring).

Incorporating viruses into soil ecology: A new dimension to understand biogeochemical cycling

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Published in Critical Reviews in Environmental Science and Technology, 2023

Xiaolong Liang, Mark Radosevich, Jennifer M. DeBruyn, Steven W. Wilhelm, Regan McDearis, Jie Zhuang

While microbes have evolved antiviral defense systems that may lead to dormancy, soil viruses need to maintain infectivity by adapting to host inactivity/dormancy within the environment. For example, temperate viruses can enter lysogeny as their host cell becomes metabolically less active or dormant. Lytic viruses on the other hand likely must persist extra-cellularly in the soil microenvironments until they encounter metabolically active host cells or enter a form of dormancy other than lysogeny such as pseudolysogeny which is essentially a stalled or interrupted lytic infection (Chevallereau et al., 2022). It is not known to what extent lytic soil viruses engage in such dormant stages of reproduction. Thus, future studies to reveal the mechanism of soil viruses persisting under different environmental conditions and factors controlling the lytic-lysogenic switch are needed to better understand virus-host interactions in soil systems.

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Glossary of scientific and technical terms in bioengineering and biological engineering

Incorporating viruses into soil ecology: A new dimension to understand biogeochemical cycling