I loved both your poster board and your video excerpt. Both of which gave me great insight into the phage project you worked on this semester.
A question I have for you all is what is an HTL? I heard you say in the video presentation High Tidar lysate (I think) but I am just unfamiliar with the term.
Two other questions I have are in regards to your gel. The first is what is the ladder representative of (in other words what is the scale used). Secondly you talked about having a good quantity of DNA in the gel – how much is that and how were you able to come to that conclusion?
Overall amazing work! I can’t wait to see what future research you all do!
Hi Cristian, thank you for the feedback!
A high titer lysate (HTL) is a liquid with a high concentration of our phage particles. This HTL is used in DNA isolation protocols.
As for your second question, the ladder is representative of the size of DNA fragments. The size is measured in Kilobases.
And finally, a good quantity DNA can be measured by the thickness of a band, meaning the bands are not faint. When we ran our gel, almost all of our bands were visible but because of smearing, the bands were deemed low quality.
I hope this answers you questions!
Great job you guys!! Were y’all able to pinpoint where exactly the DNA damage occurred during the lab? This would be super beneficial to know for anybody who wants to repeat your experiment.
Thank you Emily!
I’m unsure about where the damage could have occurred since during the DNA isolation protocol, enzymes cannot destroy DNA. I believe since we had an initially low amount of DNA in our experiment before running the gel, this could have resulted in low quality DNA.
Unfortunately, we believe the contamination in our top agar was due to unsterile circumstances. If we had been more careful during experiments, making sure no liquids ended up where they weren’t supposed to we, wouldn’t have had to repeat so many steps and thus gotten further ahead in our research.
Unfortunately, I believe our contamination occurred because of an unsterile lab area. We think that some liquids may have ended up on our plate that weren’t supposed to because we may have misused the pipetting tools. This led to us repeating many protocols instead of advancing in the experiment process.
Phage are capable of treating many infections from lung to kidney infections, to so much more, however since we know so little about our phage and its characteristics, it is still very up in the air.
Yes! We could test our phage with other bacteria to see if it is capable of infecting those as well. However, we would have to change many specifics in our protocols since we use incubation temperatures specific to M.smeg. Because of this, if we were to use a different bacteria, we would have to change many elements of our experiment and get varying results.
curesymposium.org 
Hello Diaz de Leon!
I loved both your poster board and your video excerpt. Both of which gave me great insight into the phage project you worked on this semester.
A question I have for you all is what is an HTL? I heard you say in the video presentation High Tidar lysate (I think) but I am just unfamiliar with the term.
Two other questions I have are in regards to your gel. The first is what is the ladder representative of (in other words what is the scale used). Secondly you talked about having a good quantity of DNA in the gel – how much is that and how were you able to come to that conclusion?
Overall amazing work! I can’t wait to see what future research you all do!
Cristian Joya
LikeLike
Hi Cristian, thank you for the feedback!
A high titer lysate (HTL) is a liquid with a high concentration of our phage particles. This HTL is used in DNA isolation protocols.
As for your second question, the ladder is representative of the size of DNA fragments. The size is measured in Kilobases.
And finally, a good quantity DNA can be measured by the thickness of a band, meaning the bands are not faint. When we ran our gel, almost all of our bands were visible but because of smearing, the bands were deemed low quality.
I hope this answers you questions!
LikeLike
Great job you guys!! Were y’all able to pinpoint where exactly the DNA damage occurred during the lab? This would be super beneficial to know for anybody who wants to repeat your experiment.
LikeLike
Thank you Emily!
I’m unsure about where the damage could have occurred since during the DNA isolation protocol, enzymes cannot destroy DNA. I believe since we had an initially low amount of DNA in our experiment before running the gel, this could have resulted in low quality DNA.
LikeLike
What do you think the contamination in your top agar was due to? How did this affect your experiment?
LikeLike
Unfortunately, we believe the contamination in our top agar was due to unsterile circumstances. If we had been more careful during experiments, making sure no liquids ended up where they weren’t supposed to we, wouldn’t have had to repeat so many steps and thus gotten further ahead in our research.
LikeLike
Unfortunately, I believe our contamination occurred because of an unsterile lab area. We think that some liquids may have ended up on our plate that weren’t supposed to because we may have misused the pipetting tools. This led to us repeating many protocols instead of advancing in the experiment process.
LikeLike
What diseases do you think this phage would help illuminate or help to find a treatment/cure?
LikeLike
Phage are capable of treating many infections from lung to kidney infections, to so much more, however since we know so little about our phage and its characteristics, it is still very up in the air.
LikeLike
You tested your phage against the M. smeg bacterium – do you think you would get varying results with other bacteria? Why?
LikeLike
Yes! We could test our phage with other bacteria to see if it is capable of infecting those as well. However, we would have to change many specifics in our protocols since we use incubation temperatures specific to M.smeg. Because of this, if we were to use a different bacteria, we would have to change many elements of our experiment and get varying results.
LikeLike