Small World Initiative Student Research Lab

There are many pathogens developing powerful resistance to antibiotics. Multiple pharmaceuticals are not willing to attempt to develop new antibiotics because of cost. The purpose of the SWI research we are doing in this lab course is to find potential antibiotic candidates arising from the various soil samples we have brought in to test. These samples were taken from multiple places in Kansas, around the Kansas City area. We accomplished the research by learning to detect bacteria in approximately one gram of sample soil. We first started with serial dilution to provide sites of zones of inhibition. The next step was to re-plate the concentration producing the most zones to create more to work with. Next, we singled out the potential antibiotic producing bacteria by transferring them to a master plate. After, we moved the bacterium to antibiotic screening plates to test against gram positive and gram negative safe relatives. Though we are still performing this research, I believe my class will have many antibiotic producing bacteria leading to destruction of antibiotic resistant pathogens