ANTIBIOTIC DISCOVERY: SMALL WORLD/TINY EARTH INITIATIVE
Abstract
Antibiotics help save lives each and every day. Antibiotic resistance continues to be a challenge in medicine today as people take antibiotics too frequently and incorrectly. While bacteria adapt to our ways of fighting them, we must keep up and fight back. In order to keep helping patients while fighting antibiotic resistance, doctors need new antibiotics on the market. There are many bacteria in our world that we come in contact with each day that may be able to assist with this problem. The Small World Initiative and Tiny Earth Program allow students to evaluate soil in order to locate potential antibiotic-producing bacteria. I examined a bacterium that I isolated from soil found on the campus of Pennsylvania State University Schuylkill. Methods of examination include simple stain, gram stain, and negative stain. Mannitol salt agar, MacConkey agar, eosin Methylene blue agar, endo agar, and starch casein agar were all used for characterization. Phenol red, MRVP, and nitrate reduction were biochemical tests that were run. So far, results indicate my bacteria is methyl red positive, VP negative, can utilize peptones, and has low motility. Also, my bacterium goes through acid fermentation and is catalase positive. Studying bacterium such as this through these programs will hopefully provide future treatment and be a valuable asset to the medical community.
Poster
Presentation
Hailey’s Presentation of Her Poster on Zoom
Mini Bio
Hello! I’m Hailey Ketch and I am a previous biology major who found a love for healthcare and nursing after being hospitalized. Currently, I am working on an inpatient rehabilitation unit for Lehigh Valley Hospital as a technical partner. I have a passion for healthcare and I love that no shift is ever the same! I have a deep respect for the biology behind every medication and treatment used on patients and greatly enjoy learning all of this valuable information. I hope to take everything I have learned through this amazing experience of antibiotic discovery research and carry it with me in my career. In the future, I would love to be a pediatric oncology or pediatric intensive care unit nurse.