That’s a good question! While doing our purifications, we could tell we had different species of phages because we had two different types of plaques on our plates (one looked like a bullsye and the other looked like just a clear dot). We purified until we had only 1 type of plaque on our plate (the small lytic one), which we could visually observe. It took us 5 purifications to get to where we only had only this type of plaque visible, at which point we knew we had isolated only the lytic phage and could stop purifying.
Yea! We wanted to know what cluster our phage belonged to. Phage clusters have similar types of phages that infect similar bacterial strains. The gel electrophoresis was pat of that process, where we used enzymes to cut our phage DNA at certain locations, see if any cuts did happen (these are specific to certain phages in certain clusters, since they share a lot of DNA), and then based on those cuts we ran a new gel to see if the DNA for our phage was similar to the DNA of phages in our hypothesized clusters.
Good question! I think phage therapy itself is relating to treating bacterial infections. Phages by themselves, however, can probably be used in other aspects rather than medical treatments. For example, if there is a biological hazard or an infestation of bacteria in lakes/water supplies, phages could be used as a natural and effective cleaner for these industrial used. There are many other uses for phages as well, including tearing down biofilms in nature and industry (particularly in reactor processes where biological materials/bacteria can build up).
curesymposium.org 
Knowing that it took you several rounds of purification, when could you determine that you had successfully isolated just the lytic phage?
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That’s a good question! While doing our purifications, we could tell we had different species of phages because we had two different types of plaques on our plates (one looked like a bullsye and the other looked like just a clear dot). We purified until we had only 1 type of plaque on our plate (the small lytic one), which we could visually observe. It took us 5 purifications to get to where we only had only this type of plaque visible, at which point we knew we had isolated only the lytic phage and could stop purifying.
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Can you expand more on what the gel electrophoresis did for your project
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Yea! We wanted to know what cluster our phage belonged to. Phage clusters have similar types of phages that infect similar bacterial strains. The gel electrophoresis was pat of that process, where we used enzymes to cut our phage DNA at certain locations, see if any cuts did happen (these are specific to certain phages in certain clusters, since they share a lot of DNA), and then based on those cuts we ran a new gel to see if the DNA for our phage was similar to the DNA of phages in our hypothesized clusters.
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Are there other uses for phage therapy besides using them to treat bacterial infections?
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Good question! I think phage therapy itself is relating to treating bacterial infections. Phages by themselves, however, can probably be used in other aspects rather than medical treatments. For example, if there is a biological hazard or an infestation of bacteria in lakes/water supplies, phages could be used as a natural and effective cleaner for these industrial used. There are many other uses for phages as well, including tearing down biofilms in nature and industry (particularly in reactor processes where biological materials/bacteria can build up).
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