Discovering New Antibiotics

Since the discovery of antibiotics in 1928, humans have been using them to treat various bacteria-caused ailments that would normally be fatal without antibiotic treatment. Over time, with increased exposure to antibiotics, many bacteria have acquired mutations that allow for them to be antibiotic resistant. Bacteria’s ability to be antibiotic resistant is detrimental to human health because, what was once a treatable common infection has now turned into an untreatable and possible death sentence. This resistance has caused a demand for the discovery and production of new antibiotics, but where does this magical thing we call antibiotics come from? The simple answer is from other microbes, typically found in the soil. A series of steps were taken to obtain the antibiotic properties from these microbes such as collecting soil, serial dilution, identifying bacterial colonies that may show growth inhibition of other bacterial colonies when grown together, screening tests of those inhibiting colonies against the safe relatives of ESKAPE bacteria which are highly antibiotic resistant bacteria, and further isolation of any successful colonies that show signs of inhibiting ESKAPE bacterial growth. Because those colonies show signs of inhibiting growth of ESKAPE-like bacteria, they may very well be producing an antibiotic that the ESKAPE bacteria have not yet formed a resistance to. Due to the fact that bacteria are becoming resistant to antibiotics, discovery of new antibiotics is crucial to human well-being.