Dirt to Medicine

Location

CoLab, OCB 100

Start Date

28-4-2017 11:00 AM

End Date

28-4-2017 12:45 PM

Document Type

Poster

Description

Antibiotics have been used to treat many pathogens for several decades now, however, for some pathogens all known antibiotics are resisted. This is a problem that only becomes worse over the years as more pathogens develop a resistance to antibiotics. It was my goal to discover a new antibiotic to help treat at least one of the ESKAPE pathogens, the known antibiotic resistant pathogens. I started my research by choosing soil from the front yard of my parent’s farm house hoping that soil rarely in contact with people would provide results. I plated overcrowded plates of diluted soil to determine which colonies were creating a zone of inhibition (circle surrounding a colony with no growth). Several small colonies were creating zones and I chose the ten colonies that were the most crowded to patch plate. I used the cavalier method of proof plating with laboratory safe ESKAPE pathogens to determine if my candidates inhibited growth. I tested all ten of my candidates on five of the ESKAPE pathogens and one candidate inhibited the growth of Enterococcus faecalis. I created a streak plate of the candidate and was able to rid of a filamentous bacterium enough to use a single colony of my candidate to develop another streak plate. The second streak plate was a pure culture. I hope to test the genetic properties of my candidate, and send to Yale University for detailed information. At the end of my research I hope that my candidate can help people.

Comments

The faculty supervisor for this project is Heather Seitz, Biology.

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Apr 28th, 11:00 AM Apr 28th, 12:45 PM

Dirt to Medicine

CoLab, OCB 100

Antibiotics have been used to treat many pathogens for several decades now, however, for some pathogens all known antibiotics are resisted. This is a problem that only becomes worse over the years as more pathogens develop a resistance to antibiotics. It was my goal to discover a new antibiotic to help treat at least one of the ESKAPE pathogens, the known antibiotic resistant pathogens. I started my research by choosing soil from the front yard of my parent’s farm house hoping that soil rarely in contact with people would provide results. I plated overcrowded plates of diluted soil to determine which colonies were creating a zone of inhibition (circle surrounding a colony with no growth). Several small colonies were creating zones and I chose the ten colonies that were the most crowded to patch plate. I used the cavalier method of proof plating with laboratory safe ESKAPE pathogens to determine if my candidates inhibited growth. I tested all ten of my candidates on five of the ESKAPE pathogens and one candidate inhibited the growth of Enterococcus faecalis. I created a streak plate of the candidate and was able to rid of a filamentous bacterium enough to use a single colony of my candidate to develop another streak plate. The second streak plate was a pure culture. I hope to test the genetic properties of my candidate, and send to Yale University for detailed information. At the end of my research I hope that my candidate can help people.