Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

Hi my name is Martin and i'm doing my project on Antibiotics Resistance i got the information i need for the project but i need help on how to design it can you guys give me ideas

Hi Martin,

Is this the Scibuddies project you are doing?-- “Do different dilutions of disinfectant affect the development of bacterial resistance?” https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... #procedure

The instructions for this project are very clear. You must have access to a lab for culturing and working with E. coli bacteria and someone to show you how to do it. I don’t understand what you mean specifically by ‘design it’. Can you explain with examples of what it is you are having trouble designing?

The hypothesis of the resistance project is that exposure of bacteria to disinfectants of a certain strength will not kill all of them and may allow some to develop resistance to the disinfectant chemical. To test this, you have to make dilutions of disinfectants and grow the E. coli in their presence. Then you look for bacterial colonies that are growing in the disinfectant since these are the resistant ones. You pick those colonies and grow them up and test them again in comparison to the normal E. coli to prove that they have developed resistance.

If you test several different disinfectants, you will be able to say which ones are most effective at killing E. coli without allowing it to become resistant. That is the goal in developing antibiotics—to find ones that the bacteria can’t become resistant to. This is becoming harder and harder with some of the new strains of Staph aureus and tuberculosis because they are resistant to almost all the antibiotics we currently have.

I hope I have at least partially answered your question. Repost to this thread with a clearer description of your project and specific, detailed questions and we will be able to help you much more easily.

Sybee