A Closer Look at The Genome of a Phage | BigRedClifford — Presentation Detail — Celebration of Scholars

Additional Information

More information is available at carthage.edu/celebration-scholars/. The following are members of the Research, Scholarship, and Creativity Committee who are eager to listen to ideas and answer questions:

Thomas Carr
Katherin Hilson
Kim Instenes
John Kirk
Sarah Terrill

A Closer Look at The Genome of a Phage | BigRedClifford

Name: Ashley Brickl
Major: Biology
Hometown: Prairie du Sac, WI
Faculty Sponsor: Deborah Tobiason
Other Sponsors:
Type of research: Course project
Funding: Howard Hughes Medical Institute

Name: Caleb Collar
Major: Computer Science and Biology
Hometown: Rhinelander, WI
Faculty Sponsor: Deborah Tobiason
Other Sponsors:
Type of research: Course project
Funding: Howard Hughes Medical Institute

Name: Brendan Farmer
Major: Biology
Hometown: Kenosha, WI
Faculty Sponsor: Deborah Tobiason
Other Sponsors:
Type of research: Course project
Funding: Howard Hughes Medical Institute

Name: Natalia Golash
Major: Biology
Hometown: Palatine, IL
Faculty Sponsor: Deborah Tobiason
Other Sponsors:
Type of research: Course project
Funding: Howard Hughes Medical Institute

Name: Sarah McLaughlin
Major: Neuroscience and Psychology
Hometown: Springfield, IL
Faculty Sponsor: Deborah Tobiason
Other Sponsors:
Type of research: Course project
Funding: Howard Hughes Medical Institute

Abstract

Bacteriophages are viruses that exclusively infect bacteria. More than 1031 bacteriophages are estimated to exist in the world making them the most abundant biological entity on the planet. The SEA-PHAGES program is a program that is offered through the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, allowing students to discover a new bacteriophage through isolation, purification, amplification, and extraction of its DNA for sequencing and subsequent annotation. The Microbacterium foliorum phage, BigRedClifford, was discovered in front of Tarble Hall on the campus of Carthage College during Fall 2019. Plaque assays show that it forms clear plaques in a layer of host bacterial cells, indicating that BigRedClifford is a lytic phage. Over the course of the spring semester 2020, the genome of BigRedClifford has been annotated. Annotation of a genome allows researchers to understand the various functions of individual genes, compare similarities and differences to other genomes, and to better understand the genome as a whole. Through the annotation process, it was determined that BigRedClifford is in the EA1 cluster of M. foliorum phages, suggesting that it is a siphoviridae phage with a flexible, non-contractile tail. It has 63.3% GC content and circularly permuted ends, indicating that it is packaged via a headful mechanism. Information provided by this annotation will be published in GenBank to be used in further research involving bacteriophages, and similarity of BigRedClifford’s genome to other published sequences is being explored using a variety of bioinformatic techniques.

Submit date: April 3, 2020, 3:44 p.m.