Bacteriophage Builder Challenge

In this maker challenge, students design a bacteriophage (a type of virus) that can infect and kill harmful bacteria. The goal is to design a bacteriophage that will effectively attach to as many different types of bacteria as possible. Students can use a variety of building materials: Styrofoam blocks, Styrofoam spheres, Velcro, tape, string, toothpicks, and even 3D printing pens and have a limited amount of time to design and build their bacteriophage.

After building their bacteriophage, students test its ability to infect a variety of “bacteria” such as fuzzy pom-poms, Velcro squares, and paper squares. The phages that are the most successful at killing off the bacteria will be the ones chosen to use in a water treatment solution!

This process represents the genetic engineering form of developing these viruses. Time permitting, the teacher can then show students how some scientists are using the principles of natural selection to engineer viruses that infect multiple bacterial hosts. By sequentially changing the environment by switching out the type of bacteria over the course of a few generations, scientists are left with viruses that can infect all of the different bacterial hosts.