By Lucca Muta and Emily Wills

Faculty Mentor: Theresa Grana

Abstract

SEA-GENES, a Howard Hughes research initiative, is an evolution of the SEA-PHAGES project, which sequenced and annotated the genomes of many bacteriophages. SEA-GENES expands on this project to determine the functions of genes coded by specific phages. In various trials of cytotoxicity assays, we observed if any phage gene products inhibit the M. smegmatis bacteria growth. Colonies from electrocompetent cells containing target phage genes were grown, diluted, then plated on Kan 10, aTc10, and aTc100 plates. Serial dilutions of the M. smegmatis electrocompetent cells were plated within a grid organization and compared to positive and negative control genes to assess cytotoxicity. Bacteriophage genes from phage Zapner were assessed in a cytotoxicity assay, and our results will contribute to a larger dataset of phage genes that could potentially be studied further as tools to kill antibiotic-resistant bacteria.