AMSR So Far
Science is a game. Anyone who seeks answers to questions about life, earth, and universe is a player. The rule is simple: Think about a possible answer, test it, accept if you cannot disprove. Biology is a science that focuses on life. Anyone who is curious about life can play the game of Biology. I started playing this game when I asked my mom who the guests were at the wedding ceremony of Adam and Eve, at the age of 3. My curiosity toward life increased as I grew up. I wanted to play this game more professionally and I decided to become a part of the Advanced Math Science Research Program at Berkshire School as a phage hunter.
We started the year by getting to know our lab and basic lab skills and techniques. The first thing we learned was how to take off our used gloves and put them back on if needed. I was amazed to see how such a simple act could have a certain “technique”. We continued to discover the lab by learning about all the different equipment in the lab. It was so much fun to learn about the functions of all the high-tech equipment that real scientists used. It was even more interesting when we started using them. We actually tried gel electrophoresis just to familiarize with it. Moreover, we got to use other equipment when we were preparing reagents and buffers that we would use during our phage hunting experiment. I was happy to learn all the techniques and excited to ‘hunt some phages’.
We started off by collecting some dirt from around our campus. We made working phage buffer and added it to our dirt samples. A working solution is a diluted solutio
n that is ready to use. After vortexing, incubating, and spinning the mixtures, we filter sterilized the liquid supernatants and transferred them into sterile tubes. We labeled each tube. Then, we plated the supernatants to previously inoculated Mycobacterium smegmatis petri dishes. “Smeg” serves as a host for some phages. We incubated the dishes and waited for three days. However, we didn’t find any phage clearings on our plates. Therefore, we repeated the same plating procedure. We made a spot test for the possible phage plaques that appeared in some petri dishes as slight clearings. And this is where we left off.
Even though we haven’t been able to isolate our phages yet, it’s been a good introduction to a professional level of science and I have enjoyed it a lot. I cannot wait to isolate and name my phage, and perform my own experiment with it. Our first trial of isolating phages wasn’t successful and we haven’t gotten the results for the second one yet, but it is okay. We can’t always succeed right away in science because as I said: science is a game.
~Elif
Update: Elif has very interesting plaques to analyze now. Looks like she may have isolated a lysogenic virus. Cool!
Berkshire School Phage Hunters 