Antibiotic Resistance

What we have been working on throughout this course has mostly been focused on finding antibiotic resistance. Antibiotic resistance is the ability of bacteria to resist the effects of antibiotics. We started by getting a soil sample from a location of our choice. The purpose of this was to find new antibiotics from the soil using our methods for later. After that we did serial dilution. Serial dilution is a series of dilutions used to reduce a culture of cells to a more usable concentration. By doing this, we were able to pick out candidates from the soil acquired to further our examination. Once we found our candidates, we put them on a separate plate to facilitate further tests. Next, we started antibiotic screening. Antibiotic screening is used to examine if the candidates have antibiotic resistance. From this experiment we were able to tell which candidates had zones of inhibition from the safe relatives used. So that tells us if the antibiotic is effective against the present bacteria or if there is resistance against the antibiotic. Next, we did even more in-depth experiments using streak plates. We picked a candidate that was effective against the bacteria and went forth with inspection. This project is important because of drug resistance, antibiotics and other antimicrobial medicines becoming ineffective, and infections becoming more difficult or impossible to treat, increasing the risk of disease spread, severe illness, disability and even death. By doing this kind of research we can identify more antibiotics that can be effective in treating certain diseases and illnesses.