How do the different life cycles allow the phage therapies to work?
Why is knowing what cluster its part of important and how can you narrow it down further with further research?
The different lifecycles actually differentiate which mycobacteriophage can be used for phage therapy. Phages used in phage therapy must undergo the lytic lifecycle so that they lyse their host cell. With this being said, this limits phage therapy participant phages to lytic phage or temperate phage that have been genetically modified to only undergo the lytic lifecycle. Knowing the cluster is important to research because it tells us which other individual phages’ our phage is most similar to, allowing us to base our research off of what is known about other phage within the cluster. And the cluster can be determined with certainty using sequencing. I hope this makes sense!
I noticed that your plaques were a lot more thin and cylindrical than the wide, circular plaques seen in other presentations. Do you know what the reason for this is? Is it because the phage is temperate? Great job btw!!
Thank you! Our plaques were quite small in diameter (1.5mm) and are very hard to see fully on that plate that is on the poster since the plaques had to be counted. The small black lines that you see are actually sharpie marks that I made on top of the plate while I was counting the plaques. If you were to see the plate before the plaques were counted you would see plaques that appear much more circular and that contain a turbid outer halo (which is because it is a temperate phage). I hope this makes sense!
Thank you! I am unsure why exactly the plaques were more concentrated on one side of the plate but if I had to guess I would say that when I poured the sample onto the L-agar, that is directly where the sample was poured before being spread around. I hope this makes sense!
curesymposium.org 
How do the different life cycles allow the phage therapies to work?
Why is knowing what cluster its part of important and how can you narrow it down further with further research?
LikeLike
The different lifecycles actually differentiate which mycobacteriophage can be used for phage therapy. Phages used in phage therapy must undergo the lytic lifecycle so that they lyse their host cell. With this being said, this limits phage therapy participant phages to lytic phage or temperate phage that have been genetically modified to only undergo the lytic lifecycle. Knowing the cluster is important to research because it tells us which other individual phages’ our phage is most similar to, allowing us to base our research off of what is known about other phage within the cluster. And the cluster can be determined with certainty using sequencing. I hope this makes sense!
LikeLike
I noticed that your plaques were a lot more thin and cylindrical than the wide, circular plaques seen in other presentations. Do you know what the reason for this is? Is it because the phage is temperate? Great job btw!!
LikeLike
Thank you! Our plaques were quite small in diameter (1.5mm) and are very hard to see fully on that plate that is on the poster since the plaques had to be counted. The small black lines that you see are actually sharpie marks that I made on top of the plate while I was counting the plaques. If you were to see the plate before the plaques were counted you would see plaques that appear much more circular and that contain a turbid outer halo (which is because it is a temperate phage). I hope this makes sense!
LikeLike
Why were your lysates concentrated more towards one side of the plate? This is a really good presentation too!
LikeLike
Thank you! I am unsure why exactly the plaques were more concentrated on one side of the plate but if I had to guess I would say that when I poured the sample onto the L-agar, that is directly where the sample was poured before being spread around. I hope this makes sense!
LikeLike