Over the last few weeks, eleven final year undergraduate students at the University of Exeter have become Phage Hunters. The project was set up after the students lost out on the ability to participate in their original final year projects due to COVID19 lockdown in January, and ran after their exams were complete. On the first day, the students learned all about phage therapy (with an unapologetically geeky Star Wars themed video to inspire them Phage Hunters)
Armed with a Citizen Phage Library sampling kit, the students took freshwater samples from the local area then brought them back to the lab for processing. Each student was provided with a different bacterial host to try and isolate phages against. These included different clinical strains of bacteria for which antimicrobial resistance is a growing concern:
- Escherichia coli
- Pseudomonas aeruginosa
- Acinetobacter baumannii
- Klebsiella pneumoniae
- Enterococcus faecium
As well as freshwater samples, the students also tried to isolate phages from a wastewater sample from Countess Wear Wastewater Treatment works. Wastewater is often a great source of phages! We also included a chicken fecal sample from a local Citizen to see which type of sample yielded the most phages. Phages were isolated using our pipeline and then purified for sequencing and electron microscopy.
In total, the students isolated 53 phages! Most phages found infected either E. coli or Pseudomonas. One student isolated a phage that killed Klebsiella from a local bird bath! Once the DNA from each phage had been sequenced and assembled into a genome, the students set about trying to understand how the phages worked and whether they were new to science by figuring out what genes the phages encoded using publicly available online tools.
Overall, the students thoroughly enjoyed the experience and gave great feedback:
This has been a fantastic experience, providing us with the chance not just to practice new and learned lab skills, but also contribute to important primary research. I have thoroughly enjoyed and gained much from the workshop.
The students are now writing up the protocols as a resource for others to use. If you are an educator and would like us to help you run a similar course for your undergraduates, then please get in touch!.