Finding New Antibiotics using Soil
Location
CoLab, OCB 100
Start Date
27-4-2018 1:30 PM
Document Type
Poster
Description
One of the most underrated issues of today is antibiotic resistance. There are many bacteria and pathogens out in the world that are developing dangerously powerful resistance to antibiotics. There are many pharmaceutical companies out there that are not willing to create these new antibiotics because of cost and profit. The purpose of this research done during this microbiology lab is to find an organism with antibiotic characteristics within a soil sample that we have each obtained. I collected my own soil sample and I am performing various experiments to try and find these antibiotic characteristics. Starting with serial dilutions, I was able to find colony candidates with good zones of inhibition. After choosing good candidates, I moved each individual candidate to a sectioned master plate to further investigate each potential antibiotic-containing organism. Once the master plate was completed, I did an antibiotic screening to compare my research gram positive and gram negative safe relatives. As I am still conducting this research, I am still trying to confirm the antibiotic properties of my research. I hypothesize that my soil sample that I collected from a garden in Lawrence, Ks., will contain antibiotic characteristics. Through this research, I believe that research should continue to find new antibiotics that are able to kill these resistant pathogens, before we find ourselves in another an another antibiotic apocalypse.
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Finding New Antibiotics using Soil
CoLab, OCB 100
One of the most underrated issues of today is antibiotic resistance. There are many bacteria and pathogens out in the world that are developing dangerously powerful resistance to antibiotics. There are many pharmaceutical companies out there that are not willing to create these new antibiotics because of cost and profit. The purpose of this research done during this microbiology lab is to find an organism with antibiotic characteristics within a soil sample that we have each obtained. I collected my own soil sample and I am performing various experiments to try and find these antibiotic characteristics. Starting with serial dilutions, I was able to find colony candidates with good zones of inhibition. After choosing good candidates, I moved each individual candidate to a sectioned master plate to further investigate each potential antibiotic-containing organism. Once the master plate was completed, I did an antibiotic screening to compare my research gram positive and gram negative safe relatives. As I am still conducting this research, I am still trying to confirm the antibiotic properties of my research. I hypothesize that my soil sample that I collected from a garden in Lawrence, Ks., will contain antibiotic characteristics. Through this research, I believe that research should continue to find new antibiotics that are able to kill these resistant pathogens, before we find ourselves in another an another antibiotic apocalypse.
Comments
The faculty supervisor for this project was Melissa Beaty, Biology.