Filamentous phage assembly: membrane insertion of the major coat protein.

The assembly of filamentous bacteriophages has been studied in cells infected by wild-type and mutant phage; host mutants defective in bacteriophage assembly have also been isolated. Phage assembly takes place at the membrane, and requires insertion of the viral major coat protein. We present data on the physiology of this process and on the effects of amino acid sequence variations near to the coat protein amino terminus on membrane insertion, processing, and phage assembly.