Start Date
27-4-2023 10:30 AM
Document Type
Poster
Description
The rise of super pathogens is frequently reported in the news. Antibiotics that once helped overcome diseases in the 20th century have fallen as bacteria have evolved and gained antibacterial resistance. One quarter of the world’s population has tuberculosis, leading to the death of 1.3 million people in 2020. From 2010 to 2019 the incidence of extensively-drug-resistant TB increased by 23%. Similarly, WHO reports that 2020 was the first time that last-resort antibiotics no longer cured bloodstream infections. At the same time, pharmaceutical companies, driven to increase shareholder profit, have not continued to spend money on research for new antibiotics. Microbiology classes at JCCC have joined other classes across the globe to fill this gap by giving students the opportunity to address this real-world problem. For my research, I collected soil from an upland prairie pasture. Bacteria were cultured and assessed for their ability to inhibit other colonies. The prairie pasture site produced 15 colonies inhibiting other bacteria. Candidates were tested against 7 harmless relatives of multi-drug resistant bacteria. Candidate PP1 inhibited the growth of 4 of these bacteria. Tester plates were also prepared to assess the ability of PP1 to inhibit Mycobacterium smegmatis, a harmless relative of M. tuberculosis. Candidate PP1 will be further characterized using stains to identify cell morphology, along with various biochemical tests, to allow the bacteria to be identified to its Bergey Bacterial Group. Prairie Pasture #1 will be sent out for DNA sequencing as well to help identify this promising bacterium.
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Prairie Pasture Pathogen: A Promising Candidate in the Search for Novel Antibiotics
The rise of super pathogens is frequently reported in the news. Antibiotics that once helped overcome diseases in the 20th century have fallen as bacteria have evolved and gained antibacterial resistance. One quarter of the world’s population has tuberculosis, leading to the death of 1.3 million people in 2020. From 2010 to 2019 the incidence of extensively-drug-resistant TB increased by 23%. Similarly, WHO reports that 2020 was the first time that last-resort antibiotics no longer cured bloodstream infections. At the same time, pharmaceutical companies, driven to increase shareholder profit, have not continued to spend money on research for new antibiotics. Microbiology classes at JCCC have joined other classes across the globe to fill this gap by giving students the opportunity to address this real-world problem. For my research, I collected soil from an upland prairie pasture. Bacteria were cultured and assessed for their ability to inhibit other colonies. The prairie pasture site produced 15 colonies inhibiting other bacteria. Candidates were tested against 7 harmless relatives of multi-drug resistant bacteria. Candidate PP1 inhibited the growth of 4 of these bacteria. Tester plates were also prepared to assess the ability of PP1 to inhibit Mycobacterium smegmatis, a harmless relative of M. tuberculosis. Candidate PP1 will be further characterized using stains to identify cell morphology, along with various biochemical tests, to allow the bacteria to be identified to its Bergey Bacterial Group. Prairie Pasture #1 will be sent out for DNA sequencing as well to help identify this promising bacterium.
Comments
The faculty mentor for this project was Heather Seitz, Biology.