Progress Report and Continued Research 4/10/19

Rationale

The rationale behind today in lab was to search the literature to have us submit a progress report so that we and our coaches could see where we are at and what still needs to be done. In addition, when we were done with our progress report, we continued working on sequencing and protein folding in order to collect the necessary data.

Tools/Procedure

1. Progress report was submitted
2. Clustal Omega was used to compare TMPs between individual Arthrobacter clusters and between different tail morphologies
   1. Sipho and myo family groups were compared
3. MEME Motif was used to find repeating motifs in the TMPs of sipho and myo phage

Results

The results above were generated using the MEME software to find motifs, areas of similar sequences across several different sequences belonging to both sipho and myo phage. As can be seen in the motif location image, there are two motifs (shown in blue and in green) that are present in every TMP tested, creating intriguing information to look into.

Conclusion

While there is not enough data to make extensive conclusions yet, our data so far suggests that TMPs are highly conserved (based on amino acid sequences) in each cluster, and less conserved in the tail families. The amino acid sequences do however suggest certain structural elements being conserved among tail families even if the amino acid sequence is not strictly conserved. Also, protein folding between myo and sipho phage showed significant differences in the protein structure, which we will need to examine further. Finally the results that show there are certain motifs found in every TMP seem to suggest areas of conservation.

Future Plans

In the future, we will continue to look for similarities and difference in the amino acid while continuing our folding of proteins to try to figure out if there are key conserved regions in TMPs.