In your future directions section, you mention running several experiments/tests to determine the cluster in which your phage would belong. What are these clusters and how would they help?
The cluster groups the phages that have similar genomic sequences and have similar host bacteria they can infect. So being able to place our phage in a cluster would help us figure out which types of bacteria our phage could be used to treat.
Yes, so not being able to calculate our titer actually prevented us from being able to move forward with our experiments. We needed our titer calculation to be able to do DNA isolation and eventually run gels, so we weren’t able to experiment on our phage as much as we would have liked to.
Yes, so that eigth section is the 10^-8 dilution of our high titer lysate. It’s very common for phages not to be able to infect bacteria at that low of a dilution, so it’s not surprising that there were no plaques in that section.
Most experiments benefit from follow up experiments that further confirm the results of the first experiment. Do you think there is a need/benefit to repeating this experiment to confirm these results?
The next experiment we would have done would be to replate our dilutions to see just how infective our phage actually is. I don’t think there is a need to repeat most of these experiments because a lot of the experiments we did often repeated themselves. We did several rounds of serial dilutions and plaque assays. The experiments that we hope to do in the future that would be good to repeat would probably be the restriction digests and PCR because DNA contamination or degradation is possible.
In your future directions section, you mention running several experiments/tests to determine the cluster in which your phage would belong. What are these clusters and how would they help?
The cluster groups the phages that have similar genomic sequences and have similar host bacteria they can infect. So being able to place our phage in a cluster would help us figure out which types of bacteria our phage could be used to treat.
Nice presentation! Did not having a titer calculation affect the following steps in your experiment?
Yes, so not being able to calculate our titer actually prevented us from being able to move forward with our experiments. We needed our titer calculation to be able to do DNA isolation and eventually run gels, so we weren’t able to experiment on our phage as much as we would have liked to.
The eighth section on the spot test didn’t create a blank space. What does this say about your phage? Were you expecting these results?
Yes, so that eigth section is the 10^-8 dilution of our high titer lysate. It’s very common for phages not to be able to infect bacteria at that low of a dilution, so it’s not surprising that there were no plaques in that section.
Most experiments benefit from follow up experiments that further confirm the results of the first experiment. Do you think there is a need/benefit to repeating this experiment to confirm these results?
The next experiment we would have done would be to replate our dilutions to see just how infective our phage actually is. I don’t think there is a need to repeat most of these experiments because a lot of the experiments we did often repeated themselves. We did several rounds of serial dilutions and plaque assays. The experiments that we hope to do in the future that would be good to repeat would probably be the restriction digests and PCR because DNA contamination or degradation is possible.