Isolation of the Antibiotic of “Johnny”

Antibiotic resistance is a global health challenge. Students from microbiology have isolated and worked to characterize bacteria from soil samples. “Johnny 5” is a strain of Pseudomonas that inhibits all 8 tester strains when grown competitively, including both gram-negative and gram-positive bacteria. Six plates of “Johnny 5” were chopped and extracted with ethyl acetate. The extracts were tested for antibiotics and were separated using chromatography.