Combating Antibiotic Resistance
Location
CoLab, OCB 100
Start Date
27-4-2018 12:00 PM
Document Type
Poster
Description
Within the past several decades, antibiotic resistance has quickly become a frightening problem. With all the frequent prescriptions and uses of antibiotics, we’ve killed off the weaker stands of bacteria, leaving only the strong mutations of bacteria to flourish and thrive. As a way to contribute a possible solution to this problem, our class took small samples of dirt from various locations around the city (mine was taken from a field in Harrisonville, Missouri) and isolated the bacteria from the small sample. Throughout the semester, we took these individual colonies of dirt and conducted several tests on them. First, the tests were designed to see if any of the possible candidates from the dirt inhibited the growth of a pathogen. If the bacterial candidates did inhibit growth, further tests were performed to see exactly what pathogen the sample was inhibiting. I tested several candidates for the inhibition of various pathogens from my original dirt sample, but each test came up with unsuccessful results. Despite this setback, it appeared that one of my candidates (MP09) is starting to inhibit the growth of Staphylococcus epidermidis,a close relative of the organism associated with MRSA infections, along with other pathogens such as Bacillus Subtilis and E Coli. Although this candidate looks promising, additional testing will need to be accomplished to further characterize the effect.
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Combating Antibiotic Resistance
CoLab, OCB 100
Within the past several decades, antibiotic resistance has quickly become a frightening problem. With all the frequent prescriptions and uses of antibiotics, we’ve killed off the weaker stands of bacteria, leaving only the strong mutations of bacteria to flourish and thrive. As a way to contribute a possible solution to this problem, our class took small samples of dirt from various locations around the city (mine was taken from a field in Harrisonville, Missouri) and isolated the bacteria from the small sample. Throughout the semester, we took these individual colonies of dirt and conducted several tests on them. First, the tests were designed to see if any of the possible candidates from the dirt inhibited the growth of a pathogen. If the bacterial candidates did inhibit growth, further tests were performed to see exactly what pathogen the sample was inhibiting. I tested several candidates for the inhibition of various pathogens from my original dirt sample, but each test came up with unsuccessful results. Despite this setback, it appeared that one of my candidates (MP09) is starting to inhibit the growth of Staphylococcus epidermidis,a close relative of the organism associated with MRSA infections, along with other pathogens such as Bacillus Subtilis and E Coli. Although this candidate looks promising, additional testing will need to be accomplished to further characterize the effect.
Comments
The faculty supervisor for this project was Jamie Cunningham, Biology.