Thanks for your question, Mia! A high titer lysate is a highly concentrated solution full of our isolated phage. So finding it gives us more information about the phage so we can archive it into the Phage Databases then use to isolate DNA from that phage. The DNA isolation is important because we can run Agarose Gel Electrophoresis and PCR experiments on it to determine what cluster it belongs to and what its proteins and functions are.
Colin and Brianna, since we know that Phenty is a temperate phage, its is unlikely that it can be used for phage therapy, since lytic phages are only used for phage therapies (at least for the time being). However temperate phages can be used as an evolutionary tool by looking at its proteins and functions compared to more contemporary or ancestral organisms.
Thanks for your question, Rose! Based on only a soil sample, it can be hard to hypothesize the type of phage you will/can encounter because there are so many phages to be discovered (which can either be lytic or temperate). In our case, I was hoping for a lytic phage since they are able to be used in phage therapy, but temperate phages have a more interesting morphology, so it wasn’t too big of a deal 🙂
With regards to future directions why is it important to do a high titer lysate dilution and isolate the DNA?
How could Phenty be used in future research given the fact that Phenty is a temperate phage?
Why are your results significant?
You identified the phage as a “temperate phage”, was that what you were expecting and looking for in this study when you collected the soil samples?
Thanks for your question, Mia! A high titer lysate is a highly concentrated solution full of our isolated phage. So finding it gives us more information about the phage so we can archive it into the Phage Databases then use to isolate DNA from that phage. The DNA isolation is important because we can run Agarose Gel Electrophoresis and PCR experiments on it to determine what cluster it belongs to and what its proteins and functions are.
Colin and Brianna, since we know that Phenty is a temperate phage, its is unlikely that it can be used for phage therapy, since lytic phages are only used for phage therapies (at least for the time being). However temperate phages can be used as an evolutionary tool by looking at its proteins and functions compared to more contemporary or ancestral organisms.
Thanks for your question, Rose! Based on only a soil sample, it can be hard to hypothesize the type of phage you will/can encounter because there are so many phages to be discovered (which can either be lytic or temperate). In our case, I was hoping for a lytic phage since they are able to be used in phage therapy, but temperate phages have a more interesting morphology, so it wasn’t too big of a deal 🙂