Yes! bacteriophages have many different uses such as acting as bioindicators for assessing water quality, and serving as useful pest controls in agriculture.
The major limitations of the project were not being able to successfully isolate good quality and high quantity DNA despite the various attempts, which would have allowed us to predict and assign a cluster to our isolated phage. This could be expanded by re-doing the web pattern plate as it’s the step that we most strongly believe interfered with successful DNA isolation as the L agar plates were funky that time.
You can achieve this through gene editing tools, such as CRISPR-Cas 9, and gene knock out. There’s two protein genes that would need to be removed that would convert a temperate phage into a lytic phage: the repressor binding site protein gene and the the integrase gene which allows for the phage genome to be integrated into the bacterium’s chromosome.
There’s not a specific concentration for the HTL, but it’s preferable that it’s a concentration above 10^7 since it means you will have more bacteriophage in your sample which will in turn make DNA isolation easier and provide higher quantity results.
Could the bacteriophages be used for other reasons besides medical?
Yes! bacteriophages have many different uses such as acting as bioindicators for assessing water quality, and serving as useful pest controls in agriculture.
What would you say are the major limitations of the project? Where could you expand on the current research?
The major limitations of the project were not being able to successfully isolate good quality and high quantity DNA despite the various attempts, which would have allowed us to predict and assign a cluster to our isolated phage. This could be expanded by re-doing the web pattern plate as it’s the step that we most strongly believe interfered with successful DNA isolation as the L agar plates were funky that time.
how do you convert temperate phages to lytic phages?
You can achieve this through gene editing tools, such as CRISPR-Cas 9, and gene knock out. There’s two protein genes that would need to be removed that would convert a temperate phage into a lytic phage: the repressor binding site protein gene and the the integrase gene which allows for the phage genome to be integrated into the bacterium’s chromosome.
What is the concentration the high titer lysate needs to be in order for the experiment to happen?
There’s not a specific concentration for the HTL, but it’s preferable that it’s a concentration above 10^7 since it means you will have more bacteriophage in your sample which will in turn make DNA isolation easier and provide higher quantity results.