Center for Phage Technology

Congratulations to the CPT's Justin Boeckman on the publication of his Gates Foundation supported metabolomic and metagenomic analysis of enteropathogenic E. coli infection in a piglet model!

Effect of chronic and acute enterotoxigenic E. coli challenge on growth performance, intestinal inflammation, microbiome, and metabolome of weaned piglets - PubMed Post-weaning enteropathies in swine caused by pathogenic E. coli, such as post-weaning diarrhea (PWD) or edema disease (ED), remain a significant problem for the swine industry. Reduction in the use of antibiotics over concerns of antibiotic resistance and public health concerns, necessitate the eva...

Check out our new pub on phage P1 structure and assembly, from the labs of Jason Gill and Lanying Zeng! It's Texas A&M Genetics and Genomics PhD student Mike Gonzales' first-author publication and is part of a Viruses MDPI special issue in memory of the late great Lindsay Black.

New Insights into the Structure and Assembly of Bacteriophage P1 Bacteriophage P1 is the premier transducing phage of E. coli. Despite its prominence in advancing E. coli genetics, modern molecular techniques have not been applied to thoroughly understand P1 structure. Here, we report the proteome of the P1 virion as determined by liquid chromatography tandem mas...

Read our new findings by Dr. Justin Boeckman from the Gill lab on T7-like temperate phages and implications for the origin of virulent phage T7 and its relatives. The veil separating temperate and virulent lifestyles is thinner than we thought!
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0042682222000204?via%3Dihub

It is our great pleasure to host Dr. Michael Hust and Philip Heine of Technische Universität Braunschweig for our collaboration on new phage display technologies, and we are excited for new possibilities ahead!

Post-doctoral and post-baccalaureate positions are available to study the molecular mechanisms of phage lysis in the Center for Phage Technology Dr. Ry Young's lab. Contact Ry Young directly at [email protected]

In CACAO class led by Jim Hu, undergrads from >30 schools created, reviewed, and contributed ~5000 to global database from primary literature in all domains of life and published at http://bit.ly/3GLcp4H. First authored by Jolene Ramsey, 48 authors from Gene Ontology, Texas A&M University Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics + more. Bonus: ~50% of ALL GO annotations were from CACAO at one point!! Students made an important dent in areas not traditionally covered by professional

Crowdsourcing biocuration: The Community Assessment of Community Annotation with Ontologies (CACAO) Author summary The primary scientific literature catalogs the results from publicly funded scientific research about gene function in human-readable format. Information captured from those studies in a widely adopted, machine-readable standard format comes in the form of Gene Ontology (GO) annotatio...

Another DIY engineering feat by CPT's Jay Clark: portable, automated, AND high capacity environmental water sample concentrator. This allows us to isolate novel viruses that are otherwise difficult to find in the environment! Gig 'em!

Proud to announce the CPT's Phage Name Search (PhNS) web application https://cpt.tamu.edu/phns/ developed by Curtis Ross! It is a comprehensive search app, sourced from two major databases ( and ), updated regularly, and enable you to find a unique name for your phage

cpt.tamu.edu

Check out this new publication from CPT's very own Dr. Xie! Not all phages are created equal when using them to control Salmonella, and phages that work in one model work well in others. The paper also debuts a novel Salmonella jumbo phage.

Differential Bacteriophage Efficacy in Controlling Salmonella in Cattle Hide and Soil Models Asymptomatic Salmonella carriage in beef cattle is a food safety concern and the beef feedlot environment and cattle hides are reservoirs of this pathogen. Bacteriophages present an attractive non-antibiotic strategy for control of Salmonella in beef. In this study, four diverse and genetically unre...

DIY pipette washer made by CPT's Jay Clark in one afternoon at less than 1/5 of the retail price! Protocol available on request. Considering a side business in lab ware manufacture. A great way to stay environmentally friendly and cut back on disposable pipettes.

Congratulations to our former student worker Lila Ross for taking home $7,500 and winning first place in Aggie PITCH 2021 for her idea for creating a method to provide custom engineered phage solutions in order to combat disease causing bacteria. Lila was a very important part of the lab and her hard work and determination is missed!