Discovering Antibiotics in Soil
Location
CoLab
Start Date
3-5-2019 12:00 PM
End Date
3-5-2019 1:15 PM
Document Type
Poster
Description
In regard to the field of science, one of the most serious issues that has evolved recently is the concerning topic of antibiotic resistance. Over the past years, an uncountable number of new pathogens and bacteria have flourished and are completely resistant to antibiotics. As a result of this pathogen surge, an abundance of the population has become severely sick. And unfortunately, there has not been any recent discoveries to combat this crisis. The intention and goal for the semester long project in my microbiology lab course is to discover an organism from soil I collected that can produce an antibiotic. I gathered a sample of soil from my front yard and have been conducting a variety of experiments in order to find a potential candidate that has the ability to inhibit the growth of other bacteria. I performed a serial dilutions experiment in which I discovered nine candidates, and then took a sample of each and distributed each colony sample to a gridded master plate for further investigation. The next step was to test if any of my candidates produced zones of inhibition; so, I created several tester strain plates in which I tested my nine candidates against the safe relatives of known antibiotic resistant pathogens. One of my candidates did produce a zone of inhibition on the Escherichia coli plate and the Staphylococcus epidermidis plate, so that is the candidate I will use to further experiment on in order to see if it contains antibiotic traits.
Image
Discovering Antibiotics in Soil
CoLab
In regard to the field of science, one of the most serious issues that has evolved recently is the concerning topic of antibiotic resistance. Over the past years, an uncountable number of new pathogens and bacteria have flourished and are completely resistant to antibiotics. As a result of this pathogen surge, an abundance of the population has become severely sick. And unfortunately, there has not been any recent discoveries to combat this crisis. The intention and goal for the semester long project in my microbiology lab course is to discover an organism from soil I collected that can produce an antibiotic. I gathered a sample of soil from my front yard and have been conducting a variety of experiments in order to find a potential candidate that has the ability to inhibit the growth of other bacteria. I performed a serial dilutions experiment in which I discovered nine candidates, and then took a sample of each and distributed each colony sample to a gridded master plate for further investigation. The next step was to test if any of my candidates produced zones of inhibition; so, I created several tester strain plates in which I tested my nine candidates against the safe relatives of known antibiotic resistant pathogens. One of my candidates did produce a zone of inhibition on the Escherichia coli plate and the Staphylococcus epidermidis plate, so that is the candidate I will use to further experiment on in order to see if it contains antibiotic traits.
Comments
The faculty supervisor for this project was Jamie Cunningham, Biology.