1What is the overall goal of Tiny Earth Research project?
To adress the growing problem of antibiotic resistance by the discovery of new antibiotics through student research
2What is the process of colleting soil sample, and characteristics of soil regarding microbial content?
Select a area and roughly collect 5 - 10 grams of soil in tube. Mark down date and location of soil collection.
3Why are serial dilutions needed prior to planting on agar media?
Serial dilutions are needed to ensure that there is a countable number of colonies on plate, allowing for accurate estimate during colony counting
4How are serial dilutions carried out?
Start with a sample and add 1 gram of the sample to larger ammount of dilution. From that add an ammount of the sample into the first dilution tube. Now the original sample doesnt get used anymore and
5What is the purpose of cycloheximide in initial plating of soil dilutions
Targets eukaryotic cells so they don't grow on media. Inhibits growth of unwanted bacteria.
6Comfortable with calculations of dilution factors expressing calculation using exponets
5.2x10^7 rather than 52,000,000 or 3.2x10^-5 instead of 0.000032
7What is CFU?
Colony Forming Unit/ Per gram of soil
8How to calculate CFU's from a bacterial plate colony count?
# of coloniesx dilution factor/ volume of dilution
9What is an optimal range of number of colonies for counting CFU?
30-300 are ideal
10Different media used for dilution plating? why used? (Not individual ingredients)
Luria broth (LB plate) because it is non selective medium allowing for a wide range of bacteria and Trypticase soy agar (TSA plate) because it is also non selective and allows for a wide range of bacteria to grow
11What is a tester strain?
Acts as a standard reference point to assess the performance of a test due to its predictable behavior in various environments
12What are ESKAPE pathogens?
This is a group of 6 extremely antibiotic-resistant bacteria such as Staph aerus, and Klebsiella
13What are safe relatives of ESKAPE pathogens and why used?
Safe relatives are those closely related to highly antibiotic-resistant pathogens but are considered non pathogenic making them useful for research purposes such as staph epidermis, E. Coli, Enterobacter aerogenes
14How and why master plates were produced?
Master plates contain isolated colonies of bacteria and allow for transfer to other plates and allow you to keep track
15How screening for antibiotic producers was carried out
Take the bacteria from the master place and place the bacteria on 2 new plates within a grid formation and place the tester organism
16Concept of Narrow vs Broad spectrum antibiotic, how would we determine from results?
Narrow would show resistance against one or the other tester strains and broad would show resistance againt both E. coli and staph
17What is the purpose of streak plating to assess for pure cultures?
The purpose is to isolate individual bacterial colonies from a mixed sample
18What are different staining methods, different media used to gain information to identify bacteria?
Gram Stain
Endospore stain
Nutrient agar
Motility agar
Fermentation tubes
Indole test
Methyl red
Voges proskaeur
Citrate
Hydrogen sulfide
Catalase
Blood agar
Crystal violet agar
EMB agar
Manitol salt plate
19Mechanisms of action of antibiotics that are more effective against gram positive bacteria vs gram negative bacteria (vice versa)
Antibiotics are more effective against gram-positive bacteria because gram-positive lacks the outer membrane present in gram-negative bacteria. Antibiotics that are more effective against gram negative typically target the outer membrane of bacteria utilizing molecules that can penetrate through porin chanels
20Why we use ethyl acetate solvent to isolate purified version of antibiotic?
We use ethyl acetate because it has polar and nonpolar characteristics the antibiotic is most likely non polar and, because of this should stay suspended in ethyl acetate and the agar and proteins will settle in the water.
21What is the purpose of that process?
The purpose is to isolate the antibiotic from the bacteria
22How was purified extract tested for antibiotic activity
Purified extract was tested for antibiotic activity by taking antibiotic and adding 100ul of methanol to the vial. Then take the vial and place 10ul in one spot and repeating this process 3 times in the same spot allowing it to dry inbetween each placement. We then took top agar and inoculated it with 100ul of tester strain. When everything dries pour the top agar onto spotted media plate. let incubate and assess for zones of inhibition.
23Why are we doing this research in the first place?
To overcome antibitoic resistance by discovering new antibiotics