In: Biology
why do we need to calculate the titer of bacteriophage? what does it tell you? what titer is considered high/low?
One of the most important procedures in virology is measuring the virus titer- the concentration of viruses in a sample. It is used for determining the quantity of infectious virus and the widely used method to calculate the titers of bacteriophage stocks is plaque assay. This method helps in pure isolation of bacteriophage populations and its purification,and to optimise the viral titers. The basis of plaque assay is to measure the ability of a single infectious virus to form a plaque on a concurrent monolayer culture cells.
The titer of a virus stock can be calculated in plaque-forming units (PFU) per millimeter. This calculation describes the number of virus particles capable of forming plaques per unit volume. It is a proxy measurement of quantity of viral particles that are defective or which fail to infect their target cell to produce plaque and thus will not be counted. It is based on the assumption that each plaque formed represents one infective virus particles.
Lysates with a final concentration greater than 109PFU/ml are "High Titer" lysates.