Hey Zoe! I’m glad you asked, an immunity test would be done by plating spots of our phage, along with others for control, on a bacterial lawn of not just regular bacteria but on a lawn of lysogen of a closely related phage in order to see if that other phage would provide immunity from ours.
Hello Isabella, I sure could! A real life scenario where this research could be applied would be somewhere like phage therapy, where a doctor would use phage proteins in order to combat a bacterial infection. The reason why it is helpful to have so many different phage isolated and in a database is so that there is more variety in case of an unique infection.
In terms of phage therapy, the phage being temperate would be less useful as you would want a phage that would quickly be able to infect and lyse bacteria without a chance of giving it immunity.
Hi Matei. Good job! In your future directions, you mentioned an immunity test. How would you run an immunity test?
Hey Zoe! I’m glad you asked, an immunity test would be done by plating spots of our phage, along with others for control, on a bacterial lawn of not just regular bacteria but on a lawn of lysogen of a closely related phage in order to see if that other phage would provide immunity from ours.
Hi Matei, great job! I was wondering what the overall impact of this research would be? Can you apply it to a real life scenario for context?
Hello Isabella, I sure could! A real life scenario where this research could be applied would be somewhere like phage therapy, where a doctor would use phage proteins in order to combat a bacterial infection. The reason why it is helpful to have so many different phage isolated and in a database is so that there is more variety in case of an unique infection.
What is the implication of the phage being temperate? Is it more or less useful?
In terms of phage therapy, the phage being temperate would be less useful as you would want a phage that would quickly be able to infect and lyse bacteria without a chance of giving it immunity.