Investigating Soil Microbes for Antibiotic Discovery

Antibiotic resistance is a growing health crisis, caused by the misuse and overuse of antibiotics in both human medicine and agriculture. Exacerbating this issue is the stagnation in new antibiotic discovery since the 1980s. To address the urgent need for new antibiotics, I completed this study aimed at identifying new antibiotic-producing microbes from a soil sample collected in my backyard. Using a serial dilution method, microbes were isolated and screened against safe relatives of the ESKAPE pathogens to determine whether or not they exhibit antimicrobial properties, as indicated by zones of inhibition. My initial trial did not yield any promising candidates, prompting a second round of isolation and testing. This study highlights the importance of continued exploration for new antibiotics to combat resistance and expand treatment options for infectious diseases.