Testing Clinton Lake Soil for Antibacterial Microbes

The goal of this research is to screen my soil sample collected from Clinton Lake near Lawrence, Kansas for potential microbes that have antibacterial properties. This will potentially help with the growing antibacterial resistance problem in health care. This soil sample was collected in late winter of 2025. This process consisted of dilution of the sample and isolating specific bacterial colonies which were then tested against the relative safe pathogens of common bacteria known to cause disease. Several microbe samples were determined to show antibacterial properties (CD1E and CD1F). Using genetic and metabolic approaches, I picked CD1F as the best candidate, and am excited to see what applications this bacteria can offer to the health care community.