Model of T Bacteriophage, made at the Dunn School of Pathology, University of Oxford.

A clear plastic / acrylic model made in the workshop at the Sir William Dunn School of Pathology. It was designed and used for lectures by Dr. Desmond Kay who was an electron microscopist.

The model consists of a hexagonal chamber (representing the capsid or head), one end comes to a point and the other end has a long thin cylinder (tail tube). Within the chamber is a ball of string (the DNA), one end of which goes through the cylinder and out the end. Around the tail is a spring (the sheath) ending in a flat hexagonal baseplate with a rod in each corner (one is missing) (the tail fibres).

A T bacteriophage is a generic term for a group of bacteriophages, also known as phages, which are viruses that infect and replicate only in bacterial cells, destroying the cell they have infected. They are ubiquitous in the environment and are recognised as the most abundant biological agent on earth.