From Backyard to Breakthrough: Finding Antibiotic-Producing Microbes in Residential Soil

Antibiotic resistance is a growing issue that puts people all over the world at risk. Although not many people here about the growing concerns of antibiotic resistance, it has been an increasing threat since the 1940s. Programs like the Tiny Earth Network and the Small World Initiative have been created to help inform people and fight antibiotic resistance. In this experiment, the Tiny Earth Network program was used to search local soil from the environment for antibiotic-producing microbes. During this experiment, it was found that local soil from the American Midwest contained many cultivable microbes with promising antibiotic producing qualities, indicating the presence of antibiotics. These microbes could possibly be the microbes that help us to overcome the issue of antibiotic resistance across the world or at least slow the spread of antibiotic-resistant microbes.