Prescott's Microbiology 8th Edition by Joanne Willey, Linda Sherwood, Christopher J. Woolverton, Lansing Prescott, John Harley, Donald Klein

Exercise 7

Describe each of the following plasmids and explain their importance: conjugative plasmid, F factor, R factor, Col plasmid, virulence plasmid, and metabolic plasmid.

Step 1 of 6

A conjugative plasmid is capable of transferring itself from cell to cell. The conjugative plasmid encodes a sex pilus (tra genes). The sex pilus is a hollow tube that permits a cell carrying that plasmid to join with a cell that does not have the plasmid. The plasmid is transferred to the other cell through the sex pilus.