The clarity of the gel, or lack thereof is an indicator of the quality of DNA that was isolated. We simply failed to isolate good quality DNA, whether due to inexperience, lack of time, or just bad luck.
I love how you described what phages were, but I am slightly confused on what motivated you to start this research? What were the questions/hypothesis that you aim to address?
Oh, this experiment was performed in response to a growing number of antibiotic resistant bacterial infections. Our lab covers phage genomics, so we were tasked to extract, isolate, and characterize a new bacteriophage from our environment to add to a growing database of phages. Some of the big questions we wanted to know were what was the cluster of our phage, what was its morphology, and whether or not it was temperate or lytic.
We wouldn’t be able to fix it per say, we would just have to reperform the experiment and isolate more phage DNA. Generally, you’re able to get higher quality DNA the more you’re able to practice the protocol.
The figure shows us how our phage reacts to certain primers. We can then take those results and compare how our phage reacted to other phage. We then look to see which reactions were most similar and then place our phage in a cluster. A cluster is important to know as it places a bunch of similar phage together in one group for a care provider to find if they need certain characteristics from a phage.
curesymposium.org 
Enjoyed your presentation! I was curious, what causes the smearing with the agar gel seen in the pictures?
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The clarity of the gel, or lack thereof is an indicator of the quality of DNA that was isolated. We simply failed to isolate good quality DNA, whether due to inexperience, lack of time, or just bad luck.
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I love how you described what phages were, but I am slightly confused on what motivated you to start this research? What were the questions/hypothesis that you aim to address?
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Oh, this experiment was performed in response to a growing number of antibiotic resistant bacterial infections. Our lab covers phage genomics, so we were tasked to extract, isolate, and characterize a new bacteriophage from our environment to add to a growing database of phages. Some of the big questions we wanted to know were what was the cluster of our phage, what was its morphology, and whether or not it was temperate or lytic.
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How can you fix the smearing if you were able to redo this lab?
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We wouldn’t be able to fix it per say, we would just have to reperform the experiment and isolate more phage DNA. Generally, you’re able to get higher quality DNA the more you’re able to practice the protocol.
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How are you able to fix the smearing if you were able to perform this lab again?
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What is the significance of the cluster type in figure 3?
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The figure shows us how our phage reacts to certain primers. We can then take those results and compare how our phage reacted to other phage. We then look to see which reactions were most similar and then place our phage in a cluster. A cluster is important to know as it places a bunch of similar phage together in one group for a care provider to find if they need certain characteristics from a phage.
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What specific phage can undergo either the lytic and/or lysogenic lifecycle?
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We call the type of phage that switches between the lifecycles a temperate phage, and a majority of bacteriophages are temperate.
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