I had a question about Pharmerator. What exactly is that? How is it able to give details regrading the codons, protein functions, and similarities?
Also, how would this be helpful in humans? If you could hypothesize, are there any specific bacteria that it can be tested on that would yield good results?
Phamerator is a website which allows the user to look at and compare the genomes of bacteriophages which have already been sequenced. The system recognizes what proteins certain codon sequences produce and will give a visual indicator if it sees any similar regions.
As for your second question, bacteriophages are highly specialized entities which are extremely effective at targeting and infecting a very small number of bacterium species–often only one, but sometimes half a dozen. Mycobacterium smegmatis is very closely related to many infectious bacteria, so if our Cattail phage can infect M. smegmatis, there is a fair chance it may also be able to infect a mycobacterium which causes, say, leprosy, such as M. leprae.
I would test on multiple other bacteria from the Mycobacterium genus, preferably with several being from different clades, so that I would have a general idea of which groups our bacteriophage could potentially target.
By sequencing the genome, we would be allowed the information to know which other bacteriophages Cattail is most similar to, which would make us certain to which cluster it belongs to, which we could use to learn which bacteria it most effectively targets.
Hello!
I had a question about Pharmerator. What exactly is that? How is it able to give details regrading the codons, protein functions, and similarities?
Also, how would this be helpful in humans? If you could hypothesize, are there any specific bacteria that it can be tested on that would yield good results?
Phamerator is a website which allows the user to look at and compare the genomes of bacteriophages which have already been sequenced. The system recognizes what proteins certain codon sequences produce and will give a visual indicator if it sees any similar regions.
As for your second question, bacteriophages are highly specialized entities which are extremely effective at targeting and infecting a very small number of bacterium species–often only one, but sometimes half a dozen. Mycobacterium smegmatis is very closely related to many infectious bacteria, so if our Cattail phage can infect M. smegmatis, there is a fair chance it may also be able to infect a mycobacterium which causes, say, leprosy, such as M. leprae.
What other bacteria would you perform the experiment that will help the development of phage therapy?
I would test on multiple other bacteria from the Mycobacterium genus, preferably with several being from different clades, so that I would have a general idea of which groups our bacteriophage could potentially target.
How would the information you gain from sequencing the genome of your phage be useful in your future research?
By sequencing the genome, we would be allowed the information to know which other bacteriophages Cattail is most similar to, which would make us certain to which cluster it belongs to, which we could use to learn which bacteria it most effectively targets.