Student Presenter(s): Nishwa Nawaz, Menahil Kazmi
Faculty Mentor: Bryan Gibb
Department: Biological and Chemical Sciences
School/College: College of Arts and Sciences, Long Island

Our project focuses on finding phages from the bacteria, S. Aureus. In our research, we aimed to successfully locate different samples to test and look for S. Aureus, so that we can then find phages from those samples. We hypothesize that if we try to look for phage samples of S. Aureus in places where there is a high chance of finding lots of bacteria, then we will most likely encounter a phage sample from here, and will hopefully be able to locate it, isolate it, purify it, and hopefully even image it. In this project, we first began to look for samples of S. Aureus by initially collecting samples from our nose, as well as another sample from a random part of our body. The results indicated no sign of phage on any of the samples. Next, we decided to sample filtered sewage water samples that Dr. Gibb had obtained over the past three years. We then did a spot titer for three strains. Our results showed that we had found phage on some of our samples; in particular, the lab strain yielded the most phage results. Our goal for the future: going forward, we plan to continue working with the various samples of sewage filtered water that we have. We will continue to work with these samples in hopes of successfully finding phage, by doing various different spot and full plate titers, and other methods to hopefully obtain phage samples. Once we hopefully find these samples, we plan to isolate them, purify them, and then hopefully be able to image them via TEM.