Papers by Kaitlin Simpson
Winford, for their support and guidance. I am indebted to their kindness and willingness to work ... more Winford, for their support and guidance. I am indebted to their kindness and willingness to work with me through this process, and their comments and suggestions made this piece possible. I would also like to thank Dr. Robert Norrell for the comments, critiques, and guidance he provided while I worked on the seminar paper that would later become this project. I am also grateful for the fabulous archivists and librarians working in Special Collections at the University of Tennessee. I will forever appreciate their invaluable help in finding elusive sources along with the excitement and interest they showed for this project from the very beginning. I am also thankful to the University of Tennessee's Department of History for the generous summer travel grant they provided for me to research at the National Archives in College Park, Maryland. Through this grant, I found critical sources that strengthened the overall argument of this thesis and gained vital experience with research at a major archive so early in my graduate career. To my fellow graduate students at the University of Tennessee, Emma Thompson, Alyssa Culp, and Lorraine Herbon, I am so grateful for your help and support through this process. Grad school is hard, but your insights, advice, and laughter have made it so much easier. Also, many thanks to my dear friends Chris and Chelsea LaFever, who made sure, sometimes forcibly, that I took time to breathe, eat, and relax. And to my family, Nathan, Ashley, Nickolas, and Abigail, thank you for your undying emotional, mental, and spiritual support through the hectic time that is graduate school. I love you all. Most importantly, to my fabulous parents Paul and Wanda Simpson, who taught me to iii see the world as a global family and to treat everybody within it with love, dignity, and respectto you, I am eternally grateful.
PLOS One, 2011
Mycobacteriophages are viruses that infect mycobacterial hosts such as Mycobacterium smegmatis an... more Mycobacteriophages are viruses that infect mycobacterial hosts such as Mycobacterium smegmatis and Mycobacterium tuberculosis. All mycobacteriophages characterized to date are dsDNA tailed phages, and have either siphoviral or myoviral morphotypes. However, their genetic diversity is considerable, and although sixty-two genomes have been sequenced and comparatively analyzed, these likely represent only a small portion of the diversity of the mycobacteriophage population at large. Here we report the isolation, sequencing and comparative genomic analysis of 18 new mycobacteriophages isolated from geographically distinct locations within the United States. Although no clear correlation between location and genome type can be discerned, these genomes expand our knowledge of mycobacteriophage diversity and enhance our understanding of the roles of mobile elements in viral evolution. Expansion of the number of mycobacteriophages grouped within Cluster A provides insights into the basis of immune specificity in these temperate phages, and we also describe a novel example of apparent immunity theft. The isolation and genomic analysis of bacteriophages by freshman college students provides an example of an authentic research experience for novice scientists.
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Papers by Kaitlin Simpson