Studies

So I thought I'd give you a little peek into what I'm doing in school right now. To give you some background, every week, I do work in a lab for a class studying the properties of viruses. This past week, we worked with a virus called T4 Bacteriaphage to observe the action of transduction: the transfer of non-viral DNA from one bacterial host to anther via a viral vector(carrier).

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"In this lab, properties of transduction were tested for and observed. Horizontal transfer of non-viral DNA between two distinct strains of bacteria via bacteriophage infection was the ideal observation. We attempted to identify the correct titer that produces useful viral plaques. This was accomplished by taking a strain of bacteria that was antibiotic-resistant, infecting it with a virus known for its transduction capabilities, then infect a new antibiotic-sensitive bacterial strain with the same virus. Testing for levels of transducibility, dependent upon location of the tranducible material: host genome, plasmids, or unknown coliphages. We expect to see incongruity in levels of transduction. Because we are studying the transfer of non viral-DNA, we hope to see growth of the antibiotic-sensitive strain in the presence of antibiotic; indicating successful transduction of specific antibiotic resistance markers originally found in the first strain."

That's what I will put in my report, or at least a revised version of that. Basically what it is saying is that we'll grow a culture bacteria that are resistant to an antibiotic, then infect that with bacteria that will hopefully, during replication and transcription of the viral DNA within the cell, pick up some of the DNA that has antibiotic resistance. Then when we isolate that virus out and infect a strain of bacteria known to be susceptible to antibiotics, the virus will then, again, hopefully transfer some of its DNA again to the new bacteria wherein we can test to see if that bacteria will then grow up on an antibiotic media. That's what all the quoted stuff meant.

It sounds interesting but the thing about all of this is that there's really nothing to see ever. On occasion, you'll get to see some turbid(cloudy) mess in a test tube but really it's not all that great.

Anyway, I just thought whoever reads this might want to know a little more about what I do here at school. I'm pretty removed from everything most of the year so I thought that might be a kinda interesting for some of you.