The term project is due April 24th, in class at 11:20pm and is worth 100 points. Students are encouraged to help each other on the project, but must turn in only their own work.

The term project is a molecular phylogenetic analysis of at least one unknown specie isolated in lab. Each student has isolated at least a couple of organisms from their own samples, then attempted to amplify ssu-rDNA from some of these. Any of these that contained an appropriate-sized PCR product (1kbp) were sent to Eurofins/MWG/Operon in Huntsville, Alabama for sequencing with 515F, one of the primers used to obtain the DNA by amplification. These sequences are the starting point for a molecular phylogenetic analysis.

The term project you turn in must contain the following items - THIS IS A CHECKLIST! Each of the major headings below are links to detailed directions for that section.

1. Your data
   • A summary of the microbiological information about your isolates.
   • Printouts of the raw data from your sequencing reactions (the .pdf files) with the reliable region of this sequence (from the .clip file) highlighted.
2. An database search with your sequence
   • A printout of the Sequence Match results.
   • A printout of the sequence(s) most similar to yours identified in this Sequence Match.
   • A printout of the Classifier results.
3. A phylogenetic analysis of your sequence(s)
   • An phylogenetic tree containing your sequence(s) and representatives from major bacterial phyla, with your sequence highlighted and each phylogenetic group indicated.
   • A final tree containing your sequence(s), the sequences closely related to your sequences, and other representative sequences, with your sequence highlighted and each phylogenetic group indicated.
4. The Writeup
   • Introduction
   • Results
   • Discussion
   • Citations