The Search of Antibiotics in Soil.

Bacteria are becoming more resistant to commonly used antibiotics which are harmful to human health. This resistance makes treating infections complicated and more time consuming. Finding new antibiotics is tough because it takes time and money to dig through soil and complete the tests required to find them. I dug soil from my backyard and did a serial dilution, tested them through the safe relative of ESKAPE pathogens. I ended up choosing 12 colonies to test against the safe relative ESKAPE and found my one candidate, “Patty”, which showed a zone of inhibition against Enterococcus faecium. I will be doing more tests in the near future to determine if this candidate could be used for antibiotic resistance.