Rationale:

Corrected NapoleonB gene 44 and combined abstracts with other group members for a possible poster abstract.

Procedure:

Opened DNA Master and phage notes. Checked for errors in gene 44 with the help of Genemark, DNA Master, NCBI BLAST, PhageDB, HHpred, and phage notes. The start codon was changed and the product was placed into NCBI BLASTp to check for possible functions.

Results:

Conclusions:

Start codon pulled to 30372 and the product was checked in HHpred, NCBI BLASTp, and PhageDb to see the known function. Few sentences from my abstract were added into Brandon’s abstract, and grammatical errors were fixed as a group. Working in groups can be very beneficial since you will be able to see from multiple points of views, and also helps avoid confirmation bias.

Future Plans:

Start individual projects and designs for conferences.

1. While working with sick locusts, he observed that there was some clearing on his plates, which were called at the time taches vierges. With the discovery of these clearing lead to multiple tests, and at the time he thought he were somehow related to the locusts disease This would later lead to future test performed by d’Herelle and the publishing of his first paper, his results of his findings in these lytic creatures, that are smaller than bacteria. World war one started, and it mission of monitoring disease outbreaks and manufacturing commercial vaccines took on new urgency. This led to the hault of his recent discorvies, but the continuation of how these “clearing” were. Once asked to look into a new outbreak during the war, he performed multiple tests, and saw these taches vierges once again, and lead to many experiments and the publication of his paper.

2. d’Herelle loved sciences as a child and taught himself microbiology/phage biology. As he was returning to Paris from Rio de Janeiro by ship, yellow fever broke out among the passengers and crew. At that moment, he saw something that would lead to him focusing of later to known as phage biology. Following in the footsteps of his hero Louis Pasteur where he would begin his studies studying fermentations. He was very driven by science, and so was Georgi Eliava. The two share many things in common such as they both came from privileged backgrounds. Their fathers were doctors from a well-connected family. Eliava was easily distracted and often carried away with many different ideas, which lead many of his lab experiments remained in his labs for weeks untouched. The two shared a warm friendship and the two published two papers together. Years later. Civil broke out in Spain and Eliava was arrested, which would cut all ties between Tbilisi’s Bacteriophage Institute and the West for more than 50 years.

3. War helped d’Herelle realize that there was a correlation between his last two findings, and it helped him discover an agent that is smaller than bacteria. He performed many tests to prove his hypothesis, and soon he traveled all over the world to help cure diseases around the world. Governments in India changed to allow the use of bacteriophages since phage therapy proved to show success in lab and on humans. With the later wars like WWII and civil wars in the Eastern hemisphere, caused many ties with the western labs. The eastern labs were closed and scientists like Eliava were arrested. Politics and war played a great role with the spread of bacteriophage. If the two scientists were still sharing information during wars, the west might have kept up with bacteriophage. Since the west lost ties, the west found new ways to treating humans (antibodies) while the east kept up with bacteriophage, and they use antibodies as well.

4. One reason that phage therapy failed was due to the fact articles that showed antibiotics were the new thing to cure diseases/illness pushed halted phage therapy in the western hemisphere, whereas phage therapy stopped in the east, but did not completely stop as in the west. Another reason why phage therapy failed in other parts of the country was due to the fact of multiple strains of the same bacteria were in different parts of the country. While d’Herelle helped heal thousands in Bombay, he sent his phage used to cure cholera in Egypt to India, but the phage did not work since the viruses isolated in Indochina didn’t work against the strain of phage bacteria active in Bombay. Without television or radio, word of outbreak of this new phage therapy spread slowly.

5. The two scientists around the same time started bacteriophage research. Delbruck was searching for a way to apply the laws of physics to biology which lead him to bacteriophages. He and two other scientists aimed x-rays at the genes if Drosophila fruit flies and demonstrated that the genes mutated proportionally to given dose of radiation, which proved genes are “the ultimate units of life”. Like Delbruck, Luria began to think of a field that could bride the field of biology along with physics. After reading Delbruck’s paper on the genes, Luria discovered bacteriophages. The two became intrigued with bacteriophages, which lead to meetings that became known as the phage group. Through many talks, the question was if bacteriophages were really genes, like human genes, then it would give a new angle to look at human body genes. The two contributed to phage biology through there similar interests and what they saw in genes and how bacteriophages are the tools for studying genes. The group that was formed by the two introduced chemists, biologists and physicists to change and would be the birth of molecular biology. Phage biology died since scientists were intrigued with a new topic and that topic was how higher organisms reproduce and any role that phages might have once played in curing humans was viewed as a failed effort.

6. Discovery of bacteriophage has come a long way and with the help of multiple scientists, phage have helped cure millions in the early 1900’s to 1950’s. It is amazing to see how much of a role politics plays in our lives. Politics “run” everything and it very important. Wars had a huge effect and how it prevented the spread of this wealth of knowledge. This first few chapters of the book were a really great read and it was very fascinating to see where bacteriophages have come from. We started this class without little to no knowledge about bacteriophage, let alone any of the history, and now we have come to understand a lot about bacteriophages.