Paige Dewald

The purpose of our soil sample project is to find new antibiotics in the soil. Microbes found in soil can make compounds that kill resistant pathogens. Antibiotics found in soil can kill pathogens resistant to multiple drugs. An antibiotic is a medicine used to destroy or slow down the growth of bacteria, but if the bacteria fight off the medicine used to kill them and they multiply, this is called antibiotic resistance. During this project, I sampled soil from on the Penn State Schuylkill campus and diluted it for plating. Then I used the pick and patch method where I picked which microbes that I thought looked interesting and later in the project, after I would have initial results and put them onto another plate. My sample was plated to determine multiple characteristics of the bacteria, including fermentation ability and other nutrients utilized. We are also participating in both the Small World Initiative and Tiny Earth Program,

which are groups that focus on antibiotic discoveries from soil.