The genetic material of a bacteriophage, incorporated into the genome of a bacterium and able to produce phages if specifically activated.
‘The incorporation of plasmids or prophages into the bacterial chromosomes is called transfection.’
‘Specialized transducing phages generated from the prophage by illegitimate recombination usually contain the E. coli genes gal or bio that are adjacent to the phage genome.’
‘This phenomenon is similar to suicidal defense against phage infection, or phage exclusion, programmed by prophages and plasmids, and may well play a similar role.’
‘To visualize the expression of genes of all 10 prophage and prophage-like regions, the DNA macro-array technique was used.’
‘It is now known that phages produced by lysogenic bacteria are of the temperate type and that part of the infected bacteria do not lyse but maintain the phage in a latent form called a prophage (lysogenic response).’