The bacteriophage f2 is an icosahedral, positive-sense single-stranded RNA

RNA

Ribonucleic acid , or RNA, is one of the three major macromolecules that are essential for all known forms of life....

 virus that infects the bacterium Escherichia coli

Escherichia coli

Escherichia coli is a Gram-negative, rod-shaped bacterium that is commonly found in the lower intestine of warm-blooded organisms . Most E. coli strains are harmless, but some serotypes can cause serious food poisoning in humans, and are occasionally responsible for product recalls...

. It is extremely similar to bacteriophage MS2

Bacteriophage MS2

The bacteriophage MS2 is an icosahedral, positive-sense single-stranded RNA virus that infects the bacterium Escherichia coli.-History:...

.

History

f2 was the first RNA-containing bacteriophage to be isolated, reported in 1961. Tim Loeb and Norton Zinder searched for and discovered two phages in filtered samples of raw New York City sewage that grew on male (F+) but not female (F-) E. coli. The first phage was f1

F1 phage

Bacteriophage f1 is structurally classified as a class I filamentous phage, and is closely related to the other Ff phages, such as M13 and phage fd.In the following page, genes will be written in italics and their associated proteins in Roman.- Morphology :...

, which produced cloudy plaques

Viral plaque

A viral plaque is a visible structure formed within a cell culture, such as bacterial cultures within some nutrient medium . The bacteriophage viruses replicate and spread, thus generating regions of cell destructions known as plaques....

; the second phage was f2, which produced clear plaques.