Rationale: Begin a research outline for approved research question

Process:

• Narrow down project to be more specific
• Find software to help analyze research question
• consolidate an outline

Result:

Goals of Project:

• Compare Tape Measure proteins between the Podoviridae (with short noncontractile tails), Siphoviridae (with long noncontractile tails), and Myoviridae (with long contractile tails) tail family

Bioinformatics Tools:

• FASTA searches
• Phamerator
• NCBI BLAST
• PDB
• Clustal Omega
• I-tasser

Methods Outline

• Look in literature to see if we can find any similar experiments from which we can draw data or info
• Figure out what cluster corresponds to what tail type
• Select a number X of phages from each family
• Compare these tape measure proteins (amino acids) to other tape measure proteins in the family and then in comparison to other families
• Use Protein folding software to simulate a tape measure protein (or several) for each family and then look for differences

Next Steps:

I will start experimenting with software and Lucy will search in literature