Start Date
28-4-2022 10:30 AM
Document Type
Poster
Description
Antibiotic resistance, a phenomenon that occurs when bacteria develop the ability to survive the antibiotics meant to kill them, has become a major threat to global health and will not decelerate any time soon. The medical field is running out of safe and effective antibiotics to use. In order to help combat this problematic issue, I obtained a sample of soil to analyze in the hope of discovering a new species of antibiotic-producing bacteria. The soil is an abundant resource for diverse organisms that compete with each other, and many of those organisms produce chemicals that inhibit the organisms around it. My soil sample contained many organisms with these properties. Of those, I tested the most promising organisms from my sample against bacteria that are safe, yet closely related to bacterial species that are classified as ESKAPE pathogens, or bacteria that are major threats in clinical settings and cause infections that are very difficult to treat. The organism I discovered, named MEL22A, was able to strongly inhibit the safe relative bacterial strains Pseudomonas putida and Bacillus subtilis, as well as partially inhibit Escherichia coli and Staphylococcus epidermidis. This data shows that the organism MEL22A could eventually become an antibiotic that could be used against threatening pathogens. MEL22A will continue to be studied and will be added to the Tiny Earth Network Database, where students and instructors from all over the world add promising organisms to continue the search for novel antibiotics to fight antibiotic resistance.
Fighting Antibiotic Resistance: Investigating Soil Microbe MEL22A
Antibiotic resistance, a phenomenon that occurs when bacteria develop the ability to survive the antibiotics meant to kill them, has become a major threat to global health and will not decelerate any time soon. The medical field is running out of safe and effective antibiotics to use. In order to help combat this problematic issue, I obtained a sample of soil to analyze in the hope of discovering a new species of antibiotic-producing bacteria. The soil is an abundant resource for diverse organisms that compete with each other, and many of those organisms produce chemicals that inhibit the organisms around it. My soil sample contained many organisms with these properties. Of those, I tested the most promising organisms from my sample against bacteria that are safe, yet closely related to bacterial species that are classified as ESKAPE pathogens, or bacteria that are major threats in clinical settings and cause infections that are very difficult to treat. The organism I discovered, named MEL22A, was able to strongly inhibit the safe relative bacterial strains Pseudomonas putida and Bacillus subtilis, as well as partially inhibit Escherichia coli and Staphylococcus epidermidis. This data shows that the organism MEL22A could eventually become an antibiotic that could be used against threatening pathogens. MEL22A will continue to be studied and will be added to the Tiny Earth Network Database, where students and instructors from all over the world add promising organisms to continue the search for novel antibiotics to fight antibiotic resistance.
Comments
The faculty mentor for this project was Jamie Cunningham, Biology .