Perhaps the most compelling and unique evidence for transduction comes from the work of Chiura and coworkers (1997, 1998). These investigators observed VLP (viruslike particle) production in five marine bacterial cultures, with the ratio of viruses to host approximately 1.0. These VLP’s could transfer amino acid prototrophy to an auxotrophic E. coli strain. The viruses were lethal to the E. coli. The gene transfer frequency was between 2.6 x 10-3 to 3.58 x 10-5 per VLP. These results suggested that some type of generalized transduction was occurring, and that such gene transfer could occur using a very broad host range of donors. Unfortunately, because there were no probes available for the loci transferred, it was not possible to verify gene acquisition by probing.