Hi Roxie, great presentation! Was there a reason why your group used M. smeg bacteria in your experiments, besides the fact that it leads to various multi-drug resistant infections? Do you think this phage could be tested on other strains of bacteria?
Thank you! The reasoning behind M. smeg as our host bacteria is because it is in the same family as M. tuberculosis and M. abscessus which are very harmful. M. smeg, by comparison, is like a puppy dog (all bark and not bite). So we could safely culture and experiment with it.
Given what we know as stated above, there is a decent chance that this phage would be able to infect other bacteria in that same family (Mycobacterium).
Hi! Loved the presentation 🙂 Can you please explain what lytic means? Also, how would classify the ends of the genome? That seems like a really interesting future experiment.
Lytic is the name given to a kind of life cycle for bacteriophage. A lytic phage will immediately highjack the materials and tools of a bacterial cell for replication, aggressively destroying the host bacteria. This is compared to Lysogenic phages that takes much longer to utilize the bacteria’s resources for its own propagation.
Hey! Really nice presentation. I really appreciate how you went into detail about the background information before diving into the presentation, it made it a lot easier to follow. In terms of the restriction digest, how did you conclude from the results that it was in the A cluster and not a different cluster? Also, where did you collect your dirt sample from?
Wonderful questions! Our conclusion on the cluster is very strictly a prediction. There is a database of collected data from other phages that went through similar restriction digests. We could take our results, counting the number of bands made by the different enzymes, and enter them into this website. When compared to other phages, ours looked closest to those in the A Cluster.
Our sample was collected from campus, right outside Gold and Porter Biosciences.
I assume you mean to ask how other bacteria would react to the presence of our bacteriophage. If that is your question I cannot give you a good answer! We predict the phage would be able to infect the family members but that is not always the case. Many phage can be specific to only one strand of one species of bacteria. That is one reason why we must archive as many phage as possible, to increase our chances of cross reactivity. Does that clear things up?
Hi Roxie, great presentation! Was there a reason why your group used M. smeg bacteria in your experiments, besides the fact that it leads to various multi-drug resistant infections? Do you think this phage could be tested on other strains of bacteria?
Thank you! The reasoning behind M. smeg as our host bacteria is because it is in the same family as M. tuberculosis and M. abscessus which are very harmful. M. smeg, by comparison, is like a puppy dog (all bark and not bite). So we could safely culture and experiment with it.
Given what we know as stated above, there is a decent chance that this phage would be able to infect other bacteria in that same family (Mycobacterium).
Hi! Loved the presentation 🙂 Can you please explain what lytic means? Also, how would classify the ends of the genome? That seems like a really interesting future experiment.
Lytic is the name given to a kind of life cycle for bacteriophage. A lytic phage will immediately highjack the materials and tools of a bacterial cell for replication, aggressively destroying the host bacteria. This is compared to Lysogenic phages that takes much longer to utilize the bacteria’s resources for its own propagation.
Hey! Really nice presentation. I really appreciate how you went into detail about the background information before diving into the presentation, it made it a lot easier to follow. In terms of the restriction digest, how did you conclude from the results that it was in the A cluster and not a different cluster? Also, where did you collect your dirt sample from?
Wonderful questions! Our conclusion on the cluster is very strictly a prediction. There is a database of collected data from other phages that went through similar restriction digests. We could take our results, counting the number of bands made by the different enzymes, and enter them into this website. When compared to other phages, ours looked closest to those in the A Cluster.
Our sample was collected from campus, right outside Gold and Porter Biosciences.
How do you think other bacteria from the same family would react to these reactions?
I assume you mean to ask how other bacteria would react to the presence of our bacteriophage. If that is your question I cannot give you a good answer! We predict the phage would be able to infect the family members but that is not always the case. Many phage can be specific to only one strand of one species of bacteria. That is one reason why we must archive as many phage as possible, to increase our chances of cross reactivity. Does that clear things up?