A Phage Worth Fighting For An argument to gain the phage-or (favor) of my classmates By Thomas Raymond

A long time ago, in a grassy spot far, far (approximately 120 miles) away GPS: 36.696532, -76.243628 (It’s the little white circle by the big ol pink/red/salmon? marker)

In which the grooviest little phage is discovered After weeks and weeks of searching, our hero finally stumbled onto something that could be called a result. A small plaque had been delivered by the phage stork, and it was time to begin nurturing it into a warrior who could defeat Bacillus thur-HUN- giensis. Phage spot test yielding the first plaque 

When will my purification show Who I am inside? Two plaque morphologies appeared after a tip dip into the culture. Only one could be chosen to go on. It’s always hard to abandon a child, but the pinpoint just had a bit more pizazz. Measuring 3 mm across, this little guy had a big heart (metaphorically, not anatomically).

Morphology After taking a sample from the last plate, a pinpoint plaque was uniformly grown on plates, becoming stronger by the purification. An intense “training” regiment began to get my phage strong.

I’ll Make a Phage Out of You After five purifications, during the course of which my phage went on the run for 12 days, my phage was finally ready to web plate. From the web plate, a high titer lysate (HTL) was made. My phage that had started out as a small (3 mm), non isolated child was now a small (3 mm), isolated child.

The ‘ol High Titer Lysate (HTL) Knowing how many phages are in the HTL is important, so the number of plaques on a plate with concentration 10-6 were counted. After a minute of number crunching, the concentration was found to be 3.09 x 1010 pfu/mL of HTL. This number if far more than enough to take on any Huns.

Running the DNA Through Gel Finally it was time for all of the hard work that I trained into my phage to pay off, as it was time for my phage’s DNA to run through gel. The concentration of DNA was 100.20 ng/uL. Picture to the right is the DNA run, in which my phage MOST DEFINANTLY got at least a participation award

“Thomas, can your phage fight other Huns though?” I’d have to answer that with a resounding yes, seeing as my phage was able to infect 7/9 bacteria tested.

Can this phage bring honor to us all? So now that I’ve told you the story of my phage, and thus given you an emotional attachment, I hope you’ll be willing to send my phage off the be sequenced. In a world where people too often say “Mulan was the worst Disney movie and Thomas is the worst person,” I urge you to stand and say “Mulan was definitely in the top 3 of the Disney Golden (ph)Age and Thomas is a mediocre person, but he does have a fantastic phage.”

Sources The classic Disney movie Mulan (1998). That phage that kept popping up: https://www.flickr.com/photos/16697847@N00/256305654/ That one picture of bacteria photoshopped over the Hun: https://infograph.venngage.com/p/107977/bioproj Pictures of myself or taken by myself Google Maps The fire starter: https://www.studyblue.com/notes/note/n/quiz- one/deck/269659 The “I Voted Sticker”: http://www.holycitysinner.com/2015/11/03/show-your-i-voted-sticker- to-get-free-stuff-discounts/

Additional Fun Fact Dr. Johnson and I are birthday twins (December 20th), which is a good sign that I have a natural affinity for phages. What a nice early birthday present it would be for me to have a phage sequenced and for Allison to have a happy student.