Most manipulations with M13, including preparations of viral stocks and isolation of single- and double-stranded DNAs, begin with small-scale liquid cultures that are infected with an M13 plaque, picked from an agar plate. - [Read Growing Bacteriophage M13 in Liquid Culture Protocol]
Protocol describes a method for generating isolated plaques from a stock of bacteriophage lambda. Each plaque derives from infection of a single bacterium by a single bacteriophage particle. Because each plaque contains the progeny of a single virus particle, the bacteriophages derived from a single plaque are essentially genetically identical to one another. - [Read Plating Bacteriophage Lambda Protocol]
When an individual bacterial virus grows in a bacterial host suspended in a top agar lawn, its progeny infect and lyse the surrounding host cells. This causes the appearance of a "hole" or plaque in the otherwise homogeneous bacterial lawn. Since each plaque represents a single virus, the number of viruses in the aliquot added to the plate is equal to the number of plaques which appear. - [Read Titering of Bacterial Viruses Protocol]