DNA Heats Up: Energetics of Genome Ejection from Phage Revealed by Isothermal Titration Calorimetry.
Most bacteriophages are known to inject their double-stranded DNA into bacteria upon receptor binding in an essentially spontaneous way. This downhill thermodynamic process from the intact virion to the empty viral capsid plus released DNA is made possible by the energy stored during active packaging of the genome into the capsid. Only indirect measurements of this energy have been available until
