Extracting Antibiotic-Producing Microbes

Abstract

Antibiotics are produced by microorganisms to inhibit or kill other microorganisms, and they can be modified to be used against human pathogens. The same few classes of antibiotics have been continuously modified, and bacteria are becoming resistant to the effects. One solution is to discover new antibiotic-producing microorganisms, which has only been done once in the last thirty-two years. Soil samples have been continuously collected in an attempt to find antibiotic-producing bacteria. The soil isolates were patched onto plates containing tester strains closely related to human pathogens (Escherichia coli, Enterococcus faecalis, Salmonella enteritidis, and Staphylococcus aureus). Seventeen antibiotic-producing soil isolates have been identified. A variety of physiological tests were performed to begin characterizing the antibiotic-producing isolates, as well as sequencing on a subset of the isolates.