In the fall semester of 2008, the Biology department at Washington University began offering a new freshman focus course, Phage Hunters. The course was designed and is supported by the Science Education Alliance at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. The course offers freshmen an authentic research experience. Starting in the fall semester, students collect soil samples, and isolate mycobacteriophage (viruses that infect bacteria) from the soil. Once isolated, students purify and characterize the phage. Nearly all the phages isolated in this way are novel, meaning the students are finding something new that has never been studied before. Over winter break the DNA genomes of several phages are sequenced, and in the spring semester students analyze the sequence information to get an in-depth picture of how their phage works, and how their phage relates genetically to other previously characterized phages. Recently a research paper titled “Expanding the diversity of mycobacteriophages: Insights into genome architecture and evolution” was published in the PLoS ONE journal, and included 12 Washington University undergraduates from the 2008 Phage Hunters class as authors!
“Expanding the diversity of mycobacteriophages: Insights into genome architecture and evolution”
