Viral transduction is an important tool in the generation of recombinant bacteria, which offers high efficiency. Phages, or bacterial viruses, are used to deliver genetic material into bacteria.  Basically, scientists utilize the normal life cycle of the phage to introduce the researcher’s DNA of interest into bacteria.
The Viral Transduction kit teaches students about the life cycle of bacterial viruses (phages) and how to manipulate them to introduce genomic information into the bacteria.  Students will learn what a plaque is and how to differentiate between them and bacterial colonies, learning about the lytic and lysogenic phases of transduction. In addition to identifying plaques, students will titrate plaques to calculate the transduction efficiency.