| description | Viral protein that is expressed by a prokaryotic virus, integrated or not, to help protect the host cell from superinfection, a process by which a cell that has previously been infected by one virus subsequently gets coinfected with a different strain of the virus, or another virus. Superinfection exclusion can be achieved for example by expressing viral enzymes that alter a portion of a surface receptor thereby blocking entry of incoming viruses with this receptor specificity. Exclusion protein can also target and block the ejection and/or DNA delivery by new incoming phages |
