Date of Submission

Spring 2022

Academic Program

Biology

Project Advisor 1

Gabriel Perron

Abstract/Artist's Statement

Antibiotic resistance has emerged as a serious issue over the last 80 years, exacerbated by its overuse and misuse, and threatens the effective treatment of diseases caused by antimicrobials. As of 2020, the WHO reports the current antibiotic pipeline as "bleak," with the scarcity of new antibiotics; the primary concern is that the new antibiotics developed will not be enough to combat the current rise in antibiotic resistance. As new therapies are developed, it may be critical to look at preventative measures for antimicrobial resistance (AMR). That also includes a thorough understanding of the different pathogens, which are more susceptible to organisms, and whether their source of origin plays a role in their resistance. This study examines five strains of the pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa extracted from varying sources and determines whether their growth is identical or different. In particular, we compared the findings to the McFarland Standard and reevaluated whether this standard is an efficient way to standardize bacterial growth. We found that the growth of the strains varied, and strains PAO1 and Lw1047 contained the highest number of bacterial colonies. Also, we determined that the McFarland standard was efficient in standardizing bacteria as CFU/mL was reduced ten-fold by the McFarland but reduced the error represented by standard deviation. Future studies could examine the microbial growth against antibiotics or use in vivo testing with different infection pathways and see what concentrations of bacteria are most harmful in causing disease.

Open Access Agreement

On-Campus only

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

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