Whats the importance of knowing a phage’s category? Does it contribute to its ability to infect bacteria or what kind of future research should be performed?
Hello! It is important to understand a phage’s cluster in order to analyze certain evolutionary relationships, as well as being able to find out what the host range of the phage is. We can conduct an immunity spot test in order to analyze cluster further, as we can see if our phage is in the same cluster as another one due to its ability to infect or not infect its pathogen.
I really enjoyed your presentation! I’m curious about the noncontractile tails you mentioned. How could tail morphology relate to binding efficiency and how could features like this contribute to the phage’s ability to replace antibiotics?
Hello! What really matters is what’s on the phage tail, as these variations allow it to bind to specific proteins on only certain kinds of bacteria. Its specificity and ability to bind allows a lytic phage to insert its genome into the host cell, replicate and transcribe its genes, assemble more phages, and lyse the bacterial cell. Lysing the cell effectively can kill a pathogenic bacterial cell without the use of antibiotics!
Hello! The characteristic of having a non-contractile tail helped us group our phage into a category (for example, we hypothesized that our phage was part of the siphovirdae category. The specificity of the tail allows it to bind to only certain kinds of receptors.
Hello! We wanted to see “cuts” in the genome of our phage, which would have looked like bands instead of the smear that we ended up seeing. We were not really able to hypothesize where the restriction enzymes would have cut before this, as our phage belonged to a very common category (siphovirdae).
Hello! We believe there was contamination in one of the components we used to prepare our samples for restriction digest, such as the CutSmart we used. Someone else might have accidentally inserted their own DNA into the CutSmart, which could have contaminated our sample and degraded our DNA.
Whats the importance of knowing a phage’s category? Does it contribute to its ability to infect bacteria or what kind of future research should be performed?
Hello! It is important to understand a phage’s cluster in order to analyze certain evolutionary relationships, as well as being able to find out what the host range of the phage is. We can conduct an immunity spot test in order to analyze cluster further, as we can see if our phage is in the same cluster as another one due to its ability to infect or not infect its pathogen.
I really enjoyed your presentation! I’m curious about the noncontractile tails you mentioned. How could tail morphology relate to binding efficiency and how could features like this contribute to the phage’s ability to replace antibiotics?
Hello! What really matters is what’s on the phage tail, as these variations allow it to bind to specific proteins on only certain kinds of bacteria. Its specificity and ability to bind allows a lytic phage to insert its genome into the host cell, replicate and transcribe its genes, assemble more phages, and lyse the bacterial cell. Lysing the cell effectively can kill a pathogenic bacterial cell without the use of antibiotics!
What is the relevance of the noncontractile tail and how do features like this allow phages to possibly replace antibiotics?
Hello! The characteristic of having a non-contractile tail helped us group our phage into a category (for example, we hypothesized that our phage was part of the siphovirdae category. The specificity of the tail allows it to bind to only certain kinds of receptors.
What were the results you were expecting to see in the restriction digest samples?
Hello! We wanted to see “cuts” in the genome of our phage, which would have looked like bands instead of the smear that we ended up seeing. We were not really able to hypothesize where the restriction enzymes would have cut before this, as our phage belonged to a very common category (siphovirdae).
Why do you think the DNA got degraded if it was of high quality?
Hello! We believe there was contamination in one of the components we used to prepare our samples for restriction digest, such as the CutSmart we used. Someone else might have accidentally inserted their own DNA into the CutSmart, which could have contaminated our sample and degraded our DNA.