Difference between revisions of "Team:Nottingham/Temperate phage models"

Temperate phage models

Why consider a temperate phage?

One of the biggest issues surrounding Chlostridium difficile infection, is that of reinfection. We originally planned on using a temperate phage, modified so that it could not enter the lytic cycle, with the hope that a stable population of non-toxigenic lysogens (see lab pages for how we developed non-toxigenic C. difficile) would be formed that could outcompete toxigenic C.difficile strains [10]. Hence, we wanted to model the interaction between our engineered temperate phage and bacteria to see if a steady state could be reached and what conditions would be necessary for this to occur. We also wanted to see the time difference in effective treatment between a lytic and temperate phage to ensure that we did not sacrifice speed of treatment in order to prevent reinfection. We later decided to see what would happen if we allowed for phage to undergo induction.

Click on the links below to see our results for both models.