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Updated: Aug 5, 2025

Phage Phenomics: Physiological Approaches to Characterize Novel Viral Proteins
Published on: June 11, 2015
Twenty Years of Collaboration to Sort out Phage Mu Replication and Its Dependence on the Mu Central Gyrase Binding
Ariane Toussaint1, N Patrick Higgins2
1Cellular and Molecular Microbiology, Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB), Rue Adrienne Bolland 8 B, 6041 Gosselies, Belgium.
Abstract:
For 20 years, the intricacies in bacteriophage Mu replication and its regulation were elucidated in collaboration between Ariane Toussaint and her co-workers in the Laboratory of Genetics at the Université Libre de Bruxelles, and the groups of Martin Pato and N. Patrick Higgins in the US. Here, to honor Martin Pato's scientific passion and rigor, we tell the history of this long-term sharing of results, ideas and experiments between the three groups, and Martin's final discovery of a very unexpected step in the initiation of Mu replication, the joining of Mu DNA ends separated by 38 kB with the assistance of the host DNA gyrase.
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