What is the significance on your phage being a part of the siphoviridae family? Does it indicate something that could have an impact on how your phage could be used in phage therapy treatment?
Yes! So the first step to determining what so called “cluster” your phage is in, is determining whether it is siphoviridae or myoviridae. Knowing this can help further identify what phages yours is most similar to. Then using siphoviridae phages of known cluster, I can narrow down those possible clusters. Then, I can test those cluster primers and eventually sequence my phage to determine the exact cluster and sub-cluster it is in. Knowing this is crucial when scientists are picking out phages to use for phage therapy because the cluster and sub-cluster are big determinates of the phages host range (i.e., what bacteria the phage is capable of infecting). This means that this information can predict how efficient your phage will be at infecting the bacterial infection that someone has.
Hope that answers your question!
This could have been easily prevented by doing more 80% isopropanol washes when we were isolating our DNA. These washes are responsible for washing everything through the column while the DNA sticks to the inside. However, if you do not perform enough washes, you can see digested RNA when you run quality control (like my results demonstrate above). There is no way to really tell whether all you isolated is DNA until you run a quality control. With that said, I will definitely be playing it more safe than sorry in the future because all it takes is two extra 3 minute isopropanol washes to prevent.
Hi! Where was your soil sample from?
I got my soil from a tree behind Duane physics and astrophysics building!
What is the significance on your phage being a part of the siphoviridae family? Does it indicate something that could have an impact on how your phage could be used in phage therapy treatment?
Yes! So the first step to determining what so called “cluster” your phage is in, is determining whether it is siphoviridae or myoviridae. Knowing this can help further identify what phages yours is most similar to. Then using siphoviridae phages of known cluster, I can narrow down those possible clusters. Then, I can test those cluster primers and eventually sequence my phage to determine the exact cluster and sub-cluster it is in. Knowing this is crucial when scientists are picking out phages to use for phage therapy because the cluster and sub-cluster are big determinates of the phages host range (i.e., what bacteria the phage is capable of infecting). This means that this information can predict how efficient your phage will be at infecting the bacterial infection that someone has.
Hope that answers your question!
Do you think there is a way to make sure that there is no RNA in your DNA samples? What can you do to improve the purity of your DNA?
This could have been easily prevented by doing more 80% isopropanol washes when we were isolating our DNA. These washes are responsible for washing everything through the column while the DNA sticks to the inside. However, if you do not perform enough washes, you can see digested RNA when you run quality control (like my results demonstrate above). There is no way to really tell whether all you isolated is DNA until you run a quality control. With that said, I will definitely be playing it more safe than sorry in the future because all it takes is two extra 3 minute isopropanol washes to prevent.