SEA-PHAGES Logo

The official website of the HHMI Science Education Alliance-Phage Hunters Advancing Genomics and Evolutionary Science program.

Abstract Summary

Below is a summary of the abstract you submitted. Presenting author(s) is shown in bold.

If any changes need to be made, you can modify the abstract or change the authors.

You can also download a .docx version of this abstract.

If there are any problems, please email Dan at dar78@pitt.edu and he'll take care of them!

This abstract was last modified on March 13, 2021 at 9:04 a.m..

Monmouth College
Corresponding Faculty Member: James Godde, jgodde@monmouthcollege.edu
This abstract WILL be considered for a talk.
Geovirology: Does geographic proximity correlate with genetic difference?
James S Godde, Elizabeth M Guzman, Madison M Meldrum, Alexis M Shields, Yuvraj S Sidhu, Timothy J Tibbetts

BrokMonster, the phage we characterized last semester, was found 1/3 mile away from McShie, a phage that was previously characterized by our school. Sequencing revealed a difference of a single base pair between the two. We therefore began to wonder whether phages that are genetically close to one another are often typically found in close geographic proximity. Phagesdb BLAST searches were used to characterize the closest relative of each phage studied and the corresponding GPS coordinates from Phagesdb were used to measure the distance between isolation sites.