Sucha Journey: The Path to Isolating, Purifying, Characterizing, and Annotating Sucha the Phage
Submission Type
Poster
Area of Study or Work
Biology
Faculty Advisor
Richard Alvey and David Bollivar
Expected Graduation Date
2022
Location
Center for Natural Sciences, Illinois Wesleyan University
Start Date
4-13-2019 2:00 PM
End Date
4-13-2019 3:00 PM
Disciplines
Education
Abstract
Sucha is a bacteriophage, a virus that infects Microbacterium foliorum. Sucha was collected from a cow farm in Quincy, IL. It was isolated by direct plating and purified at Illinois Wesleyan University, sequenced by the University of Pittsburgh, and annotated at Illinois Wesleyan University. Bacteriophages are thought to be the most numerous biological entities on Earth. To help understand the evolutionary relationships of bacteriophages, they are organized by cluster based on nucleotide sequence identity. Sucha resides in the EJ cluster as its fourth member. Sucha was found to produce small clear plaques and did produce a lysogen, suggesting that the EJ cluster bacteriophages are temperate phages. Sucha also showed similarity to other bacteriophages in a different cluster, the GA cluster: Appa and Warren based on similarity of the polypeptides present. PECAAN and embedded software was used to analyze similarities with other previously studied phages. The knowledge gained from Sucha will contribute to the ever expanding knowledge of bacteriophages.
Sucha Journey: The Path to Isolating, Purifying, Characterizing, and Annotating Sucha the Phage
Center for Natural Sciences, Illinois Wesleyan University
Sucha is a bacteriophage, a virus that infects Microbacterium foliorum. Sucha was collected from a cow farm in Quincy, IL. It was isolated by direct plating and purified at Illinois Wesleyan University, sequenced by the University of Pittsburgh, and annotated at Illinois Wesleyan University. Bacteriophages are thought to be the most numerous biological entities on Earth. To help understand the evolutionary relationships of bacteriophages, they are organized by cluster based on nucleotide sequence identity. Sucha resides in the EJ cluster as its fourth member. Sucha was found to produce small clear plaques and did produce a lysogen, suggesting that the EJ cluster bacteriophages are temperate phages. Sucha also showed similarity to other bacteriophages in a different cluster, the GA cluster: Appa and Warren based on similarity of the polypeptides present. PECAAN and embedded software was used to analyze similarities with other previously studied phages. The knowledge gained from Sucha will contribute to the ever expanding knowledge of bacteriophages.