Question

2. You are working at a medical biotech company on a project that seeks to find novel treatments for gastric ulcers that are caused by Helicobacter pylori, which is commonly found as a member of the microbiota in the stomach of humans. The company wants to explore the use of bacteriophage therapy to treat stomach ulcers by finding a bacteriophage that can infect Helicobacter pylori.

2-A. Explain how you would go about isolating a bacteriophage that can infect Helicobacteri pylori. Assume that you have a pure culture of the strain of Helicobacteri pylori that can serve as a host for the bacteriophage, and that it can grow in TSA/TSB medium. Include techniques you would use, where you would sample to get the bacteriophage (hint: where would you expect to find it, given that it is dependent on its host?), and how you would actually isolate it (not just grow it). Hint: think about the work we did with bacteriophage in class, and how you could use a method similar to picking single colonies and streaking for isolation that you could use for the phage. (15 pts)

2-B. What aspect of virus-host interactions might make use of bacteriophage therapy beneficial over use of e.g. a broad spectrum antibiotic when a specific bacterium is targeted as in the case above, and why? (5 pts) (hint: while there are some benefits to broad spectrum antibiotics, what are some potential drawbacks?)

Answer 1

2. From the pure culture plate, take a single colony and streak on another plate and use UV to release the bacteriophage from the prophage state from host genome. Once released it will start to multiply and kill the host bacteria ( helicobacter pylori) and form visible plaques on the plates . Take sample from the plaques and culture in bacteriophage broth and use centrifuge to isolate supernatant containing bacteriophage

3. Bacteriophages are specific to each type of bacteria and wide spectrum antibodies differ in thier specificity to each type of bcateria and also bacteria may develope resistance to wide spectrum antibodies easily by mutating its genome and virus that kills the bacteria will be more virulant and it affect only the bacteria not the host human cells in the stomach.