F-plasmid

A plasmid that gives a bacterium the ability of producing sexual pilus for conjugation. It is a fertility factor present in some bacteria that permits the transfer of genes from a bacterium with the factor to a bacterium that doesn't have this F-factor. This transfer process is achieved by conjugation.

Figure 1: F-plasmid map. The F plasmid has two IS3 elements and one IS2 element. A recombination event between any of the chromosomal IS2 or IS3 elements and the corresponding element on the F-plasmid will integrate the entire F-plasmid into the chromosome. Tn1000 is another insertion sequence, although not generally envolved in F-plasmid integration. OriT is the origin of transcription

Conjugation with F-plasmid:

 This animation describes the conjugation between two bacterial cells.

Alexandra Meira

Adriana Lima

Duarte Oliveira