War of Antibiotic Resistance All Day, Every day

There has been a very prominent rise in the rate of antibiotic resistant pathogens in healthcare. More and more microorganisms are becoming resistant to antibiotic treatments and in turn this is steadily increasing the mortality rate of those infected. Seeing as the general known antibiotics used to treat infections are no longer working, pharmaceutical companies are not as inclined to produce new antibiotics because it is inferred that those new medications will not be able to treat the pathogens. This knowledge provides for little to no growth of new ways to contain and treat these infections. The purpose of this research project is to provide a larger understanding of which microorganisms are most likely resistant to antibiotics. I collected microorganisms from a soil sample to observe and characterize them against the safe relatives of the ESKAPE pathogens. It is important for people to be more aware of where these microorganisms are, so we can all be educated on ways to avoid contracting infections from them. Screening tests were performed on two candidates against the safe relatives on TSA plates. The main observation I am looking for is a zone of inhibition around the candidate; this indicates a resistance to antibiotics. I am performing an isolation screening by placing the tester strain and the candidate next to each other on a TSA plate to observe the growth and determine if there are any zones of inhibition present. Once that is determined, I will perform further tests on that candidate like Gram staining, spore staining and acid fast staining to compare the results against the safe relatives and determine which safe relative is like my candidate