Why do we need antibiotics?
Antibiotics have been a life saver since being introduce in 1940. Antibiotics are known to help fight against bacterial infections and save lives. Infections that can occur in the bloodstream, skin, lungs, urinary tract, and the ears can all be treated with antibiotics.
Antibiotic Resistance:
Over time if an individual is exposed to the same antibiotic multiple times this could be a problem. Being exposed to the same antibiotic multiple times could lead to the bacteria itself changing its genetic material, making it so that the antibiotic that was once effective to the bacteria is no longer effective, this is known as antibiotic resistance. Another way this could happen is if the individual is on a antibiotic and doesn't finish the full round of antibiotics.
How can we fix this problem?
The way to help the antibiotic resistance crisis is by creating new antibiotics. New antibiotics can be discovered in soil, soil is a really good source of antibiotics and by putting the sample through a number of experiments, such as serial dilutions, quad streaking, and screening against the ESKAPES, which are a type of bacteria that is being resistant against known antibiotics, this can show evidence that there is antibiotics in the soil sample. Antibiotics can also be discovered in water or fungi.
Soil Sampling and Serial Dilutions:
When collecting a soil sample keep in mind that you want more than just the topsoil. To get the most accurate sample it is best to dig a 6in hole into the ground to reach the raw soil where the antibiotics would be present. Bacteria is in a very high concentration within the soil sample and needs to be diluted. This would be accomplished by doing a serial dilution.
Quad Streaking:
After the serial dilutions had time to incubate you will want to observe them to see their growth. Some plates may grow faster than others, it could be that the last three plates had no growth or
may have slow growers and may need more time in the incubator. For the ones that has growth you want to look to see if any isolated colonies this indicates that the bacteria have the same DNA in the colony. If there are isolated colonies present, you will want to take the isolated colony and quad streak it to get a pure isolate.
Screening:
When the quad streaks become successful and there is presence of isolates it's time to screen! For this portion you will want to use the ESKAPES safe relative. The original ESKAPES are pathogenic bacteria known to cause disease, the safe relatives are similar to the original but are not parthenogenic making them safe to work with the lab. For the screening portion you will want to take 5 plates and split them down the middle so that each ESKAPE can have its own side, but with the odd number, 9 will have its own plate. On each half of the plates, you want to smear that ESKAPE number all over on its correct side Between the 5 plates from the serial dilution, you will want to pick 5 isolates and split the plate accordingly and plate each isolate in the designated place.
Observations:
When observing the screen plates this is when you are looking for antibiotic production. in each area where the isolates have been plated check the surrounding borders. If there is a clear border or halo around the isolate this is known as a zone of inhibition, CONGRATULATIONS! This shows that there is evidence of antibiotic production!
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