Location
CoLab, OCB 100
Start Date
25-4-2024 12:00 PM
Document Type
Poster
Description
Antibiotic resistance has increasingly become a major ongoing problem in human health, it makes treating bacterial infections a lot harder, and more expensive, which creates a need for new antibiotic research to help fight against tougher infections. Almost all antibiotics used today were discovered in soil, but companies don’t want to invest in developing and finding new antibiotics because it’s too expensive, time consuming, and it doesn’t make as much profit compared to producing things like cancer fighting drugs. For my research I dug up soil from the side of my house for the purpose of growing bacterial colonies and finding one potential candidate for this project that would inhibit the E.S.K.A.P.E pathogens close relatives. The E.S.K.A.P.E pathogens are the leading cause of hospital related bacterial infections worldwide, and all of them show significant antibiotic resistance. My chosen candidate “Jane” can inhibit Enterococcus faecalis, which is the close relative of E.S.K.A.P.E pathogen Enterococcus faecium, which can cause endocarditis. “Jane” also showed slight inhibition to Staphylococcus epidermidis, which is the close relative to Staphylococcus aureus. S. aureus causes MRSA, a highly antibiotic resistant bacterial infection.
Image
The Search for New Antibiotics
CoLab, OCB 100
Antibiotic resistance has increasingly become a major ongoing problem in human health, it makes treating bacterial infections a lot harder, and more expensive, which creates a need for new antibiotic research to help fight against tougher infections. Almost all antibiotics used today were discovered in soil, but companies don’t want to invest in developing and finding new antibiotics because it’s too expensive, time consuming, and it doesn’t make as much profit compared to producing things like cancer fighting drugs. For my research I dug up soil from the side of my house for the purpose of growing bacterial colonies and finding one potential candidate for this project that would inhibit the E.S.K.A.P.E pathogens close relatives. The E.S.K.A.P.E pathogens are the leading cause of hospital related bacterial infections worldwide, and all of them show significant antibiotic resistance. My chosen candidate “Jane” can inhibit Enterococcus faecalis, which is the close relative of E.S.K.A.P.E pathogen Enterococcus faecium, which can cause endocarditis. “Jane” also showed slight inhibition to Staphylococcus epidermidis, which is the close relative to Staphylococcus aureus. S. aureus causes MRSA, a highly antibiotic resistant bacterial infection.
Comments
The faculty mentor for this project was Jaime Cunningham, Biology.