The Local Search for New Antibiotics

There is a crisis and it needs help being resolved: antibiotic resistance. There are many possible theories about what is contributing to the widespread antibiotic resistance but one thing we do know is that common soil contains many potential candidates that could be undiscovered antibiotics. Several current antibiotics have come from findings in the soil that we walk on, such as penicillin and vancomycin. After obtaining my own soil sample from a nearby backyard in Olathe, I tested the soil in hopes of finding potential candidates that could create zones of inhibition when met with different types of common bacteria. Zones of inhibition would indicate inhibition to a pathogen, meaning it could potentially result in a functioning antibiotic. I chose to use soil from my town because I was interested to see if the common dirt played on by children or used to garden could really contain antibiotic qualities. Using my soil sample, I isolated colonies grown from my soil on agar plates, eventually found three potential candidates and tested all three against the ESKAPE pathogens to determine whether they inhibited the growth of the bacteria or not. Unfortunately, after many different tests and trials, none of my potential candidates resulted in zones of inhibition to resist the different pathogens. However, I am extremely hopeful that through the same or similar processes, scientists, other professionals or even a classmate will be able to discover possible antibiotics to help fight the antibiotic resistance crisis within the dirt beneath us. Therefore, I will be helping this essential effort by identifying and characterizing another potential antibiotic producing bacteria