Digging in Dirt to Save Lives
Location
CoLab, OCB 100
Start Date
27-4-2018 12:00 PM
Document Type
Poster
Description
When people are sick, we go to the doctor and expect to be prescribed a medication to help our bodies get healthy again. This has led to the over prescription of antibiotics, which has resulted in killing the bacteria with least resistance. The few resistant organisms are now the most prominent organisms and resistant to most of the known antibiotics. The goal of the SWI project is for students all over the world to apply microbiological techniques to bacteria found growing in the dirt in an attempt to find a new bacterial species. Being new to the human body (microbiome), there should be minimal bacterial resistance. This might give the bacteria potential to treat the infections that previously had been untreatable. These bacterial species might also be capable of producing chemicals that could kill other bacteria.
Image
Digging in Dirt to Save Lives
CoLab, OCB 100
When people are sick, we go to the doctor and expect to be prescribed a medication to help our bodies get healthy again. This has led to the over prescription of antibiotics, which has resulted in killing the bacteria with least resistance. The few resistant organisms are now the most prominent organisms and resistant to most of the known antibiotics. The goal of the SWI project is for students all over the world to apply microbiological techniques to bacteria found growing in the dirt in an attempt to find a new bacterial species. Being new to the human body (microbiome), there should be minimal bacterial resistance. This might give the bacteria potential to treat the infections that previously had been untreatable. These bacterial species might also be capable of producing chemicals that could kill other bacteria.
Comments
The faculty supervisor for this project was Jamie Cunningham, Biology.