Virginia Tech/phage

λ phage is the viral component in our biological system that we used to test our model. λ phage has been characterized and studied for decades. This is very important because we wanted to utilize a virus that was well known, thus allowing the team to understand λ. We also wanted to use a virus that was very stable and relatively easy to work with; λ phage again. The only problem with this was the fact that no one on the team had ever worked with viruses, let alone λ phage, before.

Before we dove in and started working with the small amount of phage (WT and Fluorescent) made available to us, we decided that the best approach was to read as much as we could on the handling of phages. Thus, we spent the first week of the summer reading numerous protocols on how to multiply phage in plates and in liquid culture. We also had to learn how to work with the Fluorescent λ phage that was sent to us from the Laboratoire de Physique Statistique, Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris, France. The phage was provided by Phillippe Thomen and is characterized in "Propagation of fluorescent viruses in growing plaques" by Alvarez LJ, Thomen P, Makushok T, Chatenay D.