Bacteriophage phi W-14: the contribution of covalently bound putrescine to DNA packing in the phage head

Bacteriophage phi W-14 is unusual because its DNA contains 12 mol% of the hypermodified pyrimidine, alpha-putrescinylthymine. The phi W-14 virion is similar in morphology to T4, except that the phi W-14 head is isometric rather than prolate, there is no collar-whisker structure associated with the neck, the tail fibers are short (approximately 15 nm), and the base plate terminates in small plates or knobs rather than spikes. The contractile tail sheath of phi W-14 appears to have a right-handed helical arrangement of subunits with a pitch in the extended form of approximately 20 nm. The "stacked disk" appearance of the tail sheath visible on negatively stained particles has a periodicity of 3-4 nm. The protein shell of the head has a similar thickness (2-3 nm) to that of T4. The phi W-14 virion contains at least 17 different polypeptide species. Based on measurements from electron micrographs of negatively stained phage particles on the same grid square, the volume of the phi W-14 head was estimated to be approximately 72% that of the T4 head. Surprisingly, however, the lengths of the DNA molecules released from phi W-14 and T4 heads by osmotic shock were 59.6 +/- 1.9 and 62.1 +/- 2.4 microns, respectively. am42 is an amber mutant of phi W-14 in which there is only 5 mol% putThy in the DNA made in the nonpermissive host. am42 virions are morphologically normal, but the length of the DNA released from these virions is only 53.1 +/- 3.1 microns. We conclude that phi W-14 DNA is packed much more compactly than T4 DNA into a virion of similar morphology and comparable complexity and that the tight packing is a consequence of, and dependent upon, the presence of putThy in phi W-14 DNA.