Soil Wars: A New Hope
Loading...
Location
CoLab
Start Date
3-5-2019 12:00 PM
End Date
3-5-2019 1:15 PM
Document Type
Poster
Description
Our world is full of millions of bacteria which help keep us alive and healthy. However, some bacteria cause a variety of disease. Thankfully, the discovery of antibiotics has greatly improved the way we treat these diseases by killing the bacteria in infected patients. Because of bacterial evolution and antibiotic negligence, there is now an increasing amount of antibiotic resistant pathogens infecting people all over the world. To combat this, there is an urgent need to discover new bacterium which display antibiotic properties against other bacteria in their environments. One way to search for these warrior-like bacteria is analyzing the soil beneath our feet. In the lab, bacteria were derived from a soil sample extracted from my backyard and analyzed for zones of inhibition. Of the hundreds of colonies present, thirteen showed signs of antibiotic producing properties. These colonies were isolated onto a master plate and were tested against safe relatives of the ESKAPE pathogens. All thirteen candidates showed antibiotic producing properties against the safe relatives, but bacterial candidate #2 exhibited the most promise, as it produced antibiotics against three of the six safe relatives. Candidate #2 was further isolated to a quadrant streak plate and analyzed to reveal a Gram-negative diplobacillus shape and arrangement. Future testing will include metabolic testing and gene sequencing to determine genus level. These promising results gives hope that soil samples may be the key to create the next medicinal antibiotic to combat pathogenic antibiotic resistant bacteria.
Image
Soil Wars: A New Hope
CoLab
Our world is full of millions of bacteria which help keep us alive and healthy. However, some bacteria cause a variety of disease. Thankfully, the discovery of antibiotics has greatly improved the way we treat these diseases by killing the bacteria in infected patients. Because of bacterial evolution and antibiotic negligence, there is now an increasing amount of antibiotic resistant pathogens infecting people all over the world. To combat this, there is an urgent need to discover new bacterium which display antibiotic properties against other bacteria in their environments. One way to search for these warrior-like bacteria is analyzing the soil beneath our feet. In the lab, bacteria were derived from a soil sample extracted from my backyard and analyzed for zones of inhibition. Of the hundreds of colonies present, thirteen showed signs of antibiotic producing properties. These colonies were isolated onto a master plate and were tested against safe relatives of the ESKAPE pathogens. All thirteen candidates showed antibiotic producing properties against the safe relatives, but bacterial candidate #2 exhibited the most promise, as it produced antibiotics against three of the six safe relatives. Candidate #2 was further isolated to a quadrant streak plate and analyzed to reveal a Gram-negative diplobacillus shape and arrangement. Future testing will include metabolic testing and gene sequencing to determine genus level. These promising results gives hope that soil samples may be the key to create the next medicinal antibiotic to combat pathogenic antibiotic resistant bacteria.
Comments
The faculty supervisor for this project was Melissa Beaty, Biology.