Akshay Mody: Week 6: Finishing Collecting Data/ preparing for lab meeting presentation

I have thoroughly enjoyed my time in the lab this summer and can't wait for one more week. This week I finished collecting data and conducting experiments for the project under my graduate student. I am presenting at lab meeting next week so I will also be working with excel and power point to continue to make graphs and make sense of the vast amount of data I have collected. My graduate student has taught me many of the techniques during my time in the lab and guidance about how to approach my project.

The formal title to my project is "Screening for Phages that use OMP A or OMP C as a receptor to explore virulence in Shigella flexneri." Every week on friday, I have been meeting with my PI, Dr. Paul Turner, to discuss primary literature about the Shigella bacterium. Shigella has receptors OMP A and OMP C that are involved in metabolic processes as well as, what we hoped, served as a phage recognition site. After screening almost 30 phages by using titering methods and spot tests, we found about 7 phages that we think could use OMP A or OMP C as a receptor for bacteria phage interaction.

To further test to see if these are in fact receptors for phage bacteria interaction, we added a plasmid to an ecoli strain and tested to see if the phage spotted and conducted a live/dead assay at the end of the week.

We have collected a great amount of information, and my graduate student is helping me prepare a power point which I will present at the end of the last week.

Overall, the experience has been formative.



This lytic spectrum shows the different hosts the phages spotted on.

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