A piece of advice that I would instruct others on is that it is okay to hit road bumps and to fail at times. I was stuck on purification for multiple weeks and got very discouraged even though it is a natural progression. In addition, I would put your hot water bath for warming up top agar in close proximity to your agar plate.
You mentioned that you would use restriction enzymes/PCR to identify phage characteristics that could be used to elucidate the aspects of the phage. What specific characteristics would you be looking for and what would knowing these characteristics tell you about your phage?
By conducting a restriction digest along with PCR I would be able to begin hypothesizing which cluster my phage is. This information would help me to understand more characteristics of my phage.
Lab work would be very similar in identifying a evolutionary similar host bacteria which could help expand host range. In addition, many different phages would be implemented in a term known as a cocktail which would allow for the therapy to be applied whether through local administration, intravenous drip, or nebulizers for example.
In order to isolate a single phage I went through the steps such as enrichment of the soil sample I isolated along with Purification in order to determine a single type of phage through 1:10 serial dilutions. The results of these experiments can be found in my result figures on my poster for a closer look in the yields of these experiments.
What is one piece of advice you would give someone who would want to tackle the experiments you performed?
A piece of advice that I would instruct others on is that it is okay to hit road bumps and to fail at times. I was stuck on purification for multiple weeks and got very discouraged even though it is a natural progression. In addition, I would put your hot water bath for warming up top agar in close proximity to your agar plate.
You mentioned that you would use restriction enzymes/PCR to identify phage characteristics that could be used to elucidate the aspects of the phage. What specific characteristics would you be looking for and what would knowing these characteristics tell you about your phage?
By conducting a restriction digest along with PCR I would be able to begin hypothesizing which cluster my phage is. This information would help me to understand more characteristics of my phage.
What would lab work to create a phage therapy with this bacteriophage look like?
Lab work would be very similar in identifying a evolutionary similar host bacteria which could help expand host range. In addition, many different phages would be implemented in a term known as a cocktail which would allow for the therapy to be applied whether through local administration, intravenous drip, or nebulizers for example.
What steps did you take to isolate this phage and separate it from other phage in the original sample?
In order to isolate a single phage I went through the steps such as enrichment of the soil sample I isolated along with Purification in order to determine a single type of phage through 1:10 serial dilutions. The results of these experiments can be found in my result figures on my poster for a closer look in the yields of these experiments.