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A22- Telling the Tale-a of Phages NyleyClemson and Phaila
A bacteriophage (or phage, for short) is a virus that infects and kills bacteria.
A22- Telling the Tale-a of Phages NyleyClemson and Phaila
Mentor: Mitchell Balish, Ph.D.
A bacteriophage (or phage, for short) is a virus that infects and kills bacteria. They have a protein head, a tail structure, and tail fibers that help them attach to their bacterial targets. They are the most abundant biological entity on Earth, but most of their genes are unknown. Phages have real-world applications as potential alternatives to antibiotic-resistant bacteria.
What did we do in this project?
The overall goal of this project was to isolate a previously unknown bacteriophage from environmental samples around Miami University, annotate all of their genes, and figure out where they are and what they do. In MBI 223, students isolated several novel phages and sent them to be sequenced, but due to cross-contamination, could not be analyzed. The sample sent for sequencing contained multiple phage genomes preventing sequence identification. Therefore in MBI 224, we chose two unannotated phages from the Genome Exchange, both of which were isolated at Spelman College in 2023, for annotation.