Our Backyard Soil, A Possible Antibiotic Against Many Pathogens.
Start Date
27-4-2023 10:30 AM
Document Type
Poster
Description
Pathogens are a problem we have faced for thousands of years, and around the world, they cause the death of 7 million people each year. Antibiotics are chemicals that help fight against pathogens, unfortunately, more and more pathogens develop resistance to certain antibiotics, which makes antibiotics ineffective. Interestingly, the soil in our backyard may help us find an effective antibiotic, since we can find hundreds of bacteria in a spoon of soil. For our experiment, the first step was to get backyard soil, then we did a serial dilution, with the purpose of reducing the concentration progressively. Then, we had to transfer 0.1ml of each serial dilution into a petri dish and wait for 24 hours for the bacteria to grow. The next step was to choose 9 different colonies among all the Petri dishes and preferably choose colonies that were isolated, in order to create a master plate. The goal of the master plate was that each colony would grow in its respective grid, and not contaminate the other colonies. The next step was to create antibiotic screenings, in which we must first transfer each ESKAPE pathogen to a new Petri dishes, and then transfer the colonies from the master plate to these new Petri dishes, to see if any of them show resistance against these safe pathogens. Successfully, one of the nine colonies was found to have possible antibiotic characteristics.
Our Backyard Soil, A Possible Antibiotic Against Many Pathogens.
Pathogens are a problem we have faced for thousands of years, and around the world, they cause the death of 7 million people each year. Antibiotics are chemicals that help fight against pathogens, unfortunately, more and more pathogens develop resistance to certain antibiotics, which makes antibiotics ineffective. Interestingly, the soil in our backyard may help us find an effective antibiotic, since we can find hundreds of bacteria in a spoon of soil. For our experiment, the first step was to get backyard soil, then we did a serial dilution, with the purpose of reducing the concentration progressively. Then, we had to transfer 0.1ml of each serial dilution into a petri dish and wait for 24 hours for the bacteria to grow. The next step was to choose 9 different colonies among all the Petri dishes and preferably choose colonies that were isolated, in order to create a master plate. The goal of the master plate was that each colony would grow in its respective grid, and not contaminate the other colonies. The next step was to create antibiotic screenings, in which we must first transfer each ESKAPE pathogen to a new Petri dishes, and then transfer the colonies from the master plate to these new Petri dishes, to see if any of them show resistance against these safe pathogens. Successfully, one of the nine colonies was found to have possible antibiotic characteristics.
Comments
The faculty mentor for this project was Beverly Tanui, Biology.