They also have a role in protecting the bacterial cell against host defences.
It only requires a few bacterial cells to cause death of otherwise healthy lobsters.
The bacterial cell itself normally has no use for these machines, and doesn't build any.
Instead, P1 exists independently within the bacterial cell, much like a plasmid would.
Its physiological role for fish, bacterial cell or insect is not known.
It is not necessary to bring the temperature all the way up to 100 C to kill bacterial cells.
Transformation is one of three processes by which outside genetic material may be got into bacterial cells.
What it does in the bacterial cell was unknown until recently.
It contains no whole bacterial cells, which is thought to be responsible for its lower incidence of side effects.
As few as 10 bacterial cells per fish can cause an infection.