lysogeny

n.
The fusion of the nucleic acid of a bacteriophage with that of a host bacterium so that the potential exists for the newly integrated genetic material to be transmitted to daughter cells at each subsequent cell division.

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Almost all strains of bacteria are lysogenic; that is, they have the capacity on rare occasions to lyse with the liberation of particles of bacteriophage (see illustration). Such particles can be detected by their ability to form plaques (colonies of bacteriophage) on lawns of sensitive (indicator) bacteria. The genetic determinant of the capacity of lysogenic bacteria to produce bacteriophage is a repressed phage genome (provirus) which exists in the bacterium in one of two states: (1) integrated into the bacterial chromosome (most cases), or (2) occupying some extra-chromosomal location (rare cases).

Life cycles of phage and bacterial host. (After E. Jawetz, J. L. Melnick, and E. A.Adelberg, Review of Medical Microbiology, 2d ed., Lange, 1956)

Bacteriophages which have the potential to exist as provirus are called temperate phages. When the provirus is integrated into the bacterial genome, it is called prophage. When the germinal substance (deoxyribonucleic acid or deoxyribonucleoprotein) of certain temperate phages enters a sensitive bacterium, the outcome may be death (lysis) for the bacterium as a result of phage multiplication, or it may result in the integration of the phage nucleic acid into the host genome (as a prophage), with the formation of a stable lysogenic bacterium. The lysogenic strain is designated by the name of the sensitive strain followed, in parentheses, by the strain of lysogenizing phage, for example, Escherichia coli (λ). Such a bacterium differs from its nonlysogenic ancestor in one very special way: It is immune to lysis by phage homologous to its carried prophage. See also Bacteriophage.

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(lī-sŏj'ə-nē)
n.

The fusion of the nucleic acid of a bacteriophage with that of a host bacterium so that the potential exists for the newly integrated genetic material to be transmitted to daughter cells at each subsequent cell division.

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The noun has one meaning:

Meaning #1: the condition of a host bacterium that has incorporated a phage into its own genetic material
  Synonym: lysogenicity

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