''Escherichia virus Wphi'' is a

virus A virus is a submicroscopic infectious agent that replicates only inside the living cells of an organism. Viruses infect all life forms, from animals and plants to microorganisms, including bacteria and archaea. Since Dmitri Ivanovsky's 1 ...

of the family '' Myoviridae'', genus ''

Peduovirus ''Peduovirus'' (also known as P2-like phages and P2-like viruses) is a genus of viruses in the order ''Caudovirales'', in the family ''Myoviridae'', in the subfamily '' Peduovirinae''. Bacteria serve as natural hosts, with transmission achieved t ...

''. As a member of the group I of the Baltimore classification, ''Escherichia virus Wphi'' is a

dsDNA virus A DNA virus is a virus that has a genome made of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) that is replicated by a DNA polymerase. They can be divided between those that have two strands of DNA in their genome, called double-stranded DNA (dsDNA) viruses, and ...

es. All the members of family Myoviridae share a nonenveloped morphology consisting of a head and a tail separated by a neck. Its

genome In the fields of molecular biology and genetics, a genome is all the genetic information of an organism. It consists of nucleotide sequences of DNA (or RNA in RNA viruses). The nuclear genome includes protein-coding genes and non-coding ge ...

is linear. The propagation of the virions includes the attaching to a host cell (a

bacterium Bacteria (; singular: bacterium) are ubiquitous, mostly free-living organisms often consisting of one biological cell. They constitute a large domain of prokaryotic microorganisms. Typically a few micrometres in length, bacteria were among ...

, as ''Escherichia virus Wphi'' is a

bacteriophage A bacteriophage (), also known informally as a ''phage'' (), is a duplodnaviria virus that infects and replicates within bacteria and archaea. The term was derived from "bacteria" and the Greek φαγεῖν ('), meaning "to devour". Bacteri ...

) and the injection of the double stranded DNA; the host transcribes and translates it to manufacture new particles. To replicate its genetic content requires host cell DNA polymerases and, hence, the process is highly dependent on the cell cycle.

References

Myoviridae {{Virus-stub