在佳博体育里：教授们讨论CrimD的发现
这是正式的。 The bacteriophage discovered in the College’s picturesque Crim Dell by freshmen biology students never had been seen before.
这种独特的生命形式，被学生们恰当地命名为CrimD，是一种感染细菌的病毒。 The students who dug it up were members of the research-oriented teaching lab led by biology professors 马克福赛斯, 玛格丽特·萨哈 and 库尔特·威廉姆森. The professors were “team-teaching” a yearlong seminar on the genetics of bacteriophages under the sponsorship of the 科学教育联盟 of the 霍华德休斯医学研究所.
The seminar collected and processed soil samples in the fall semester of 2008, hunting for phages—particularly novel ones. Working in their lab in the brand-new Integrated Science Center at William & Mary, the freshmen employed state-of-the-art lab techniques to isolate phages and prepare the DNA of the samples for sequencing—or genetic blueprinting—at Los Alamos National Lab.
洛斯阿拉莫斯佳博体育的初步结果表明，CrimD是一种以前未被记录的新菌株。 As the second semester began, the lab began using a number of sophisticated bioinformatics techniques to verify their discovery, filling in gaps of the Los Alamos sequencing and examining CrimD’s individual genes. Within the past few weeks, the phage lab was able to establish CrimD’s singular pedigree.
“Oh, it's a new virus all right,” Forsyth said. “In fact, it is not falling into any of the known clusters of the viruses that infect this species of bacterium.”
他补充说，CrimD不仅是一种新的噬菌体，与任何其他已知的噬菌体群都没有关系，而且它的DNA还含有从未在任何生物体中发现的基因。 CrimD也有潜在的临床前景：萨哈指出，医学界正在研究噬菌体疗法作为抗生素的替代品。
“So little is known about bacteriophage, and the diversity is overwhelming,” Williamson said. “This could give us a lot of information about selection, evolution, diversity—information that just doesn’t exist right now.”
萨哈说，如果没有HHMI的愿景，这个项目就不可能实现。 Forsythe said it was able to happen at a higher level due to the vision behind the College’s new Integrated Science Center. 他们说，这是如何进行研究的一个例子。
萨哈说，最近，教授们同意在他们的教学佳博体育里进行录像，他们在那里确保学生们了解基因的解剖结构和结构，以便他们能够识别序列的不同元素，并将其与生物学联系起来。 威廉姆森还宣布了CrimD发现的独特性。