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Vectors - (Sep/15/2001 )

What are the differences between phasmid, cosmids, phages, and plasmids.


Hope this brief explanation helps.

Phasmid are hybrid phage/plasmid formed by integration of plasmid containing the att site, and lambda phage, mediated by phage integrase site-specific recombination.

Phages or bacteriophages are viruses that infect bacteria

Cosmids are a type of bacteriophage lambda vector. Often used for construction of genomic libraries, because of their ability to carry relatively long pieces of DNA insert, compared with plasmids.

Plasmid or episomes are a small, independently-replicating, piece of cytoplasmic DNA that can be transferred from one organism to another.