Submission Date

4-25-2022

Document Type

Paper- Restricted to Campus Access

Department

Biochemistry & Molecular Biology

Adviser

Anthony Lobo

Committee Member

Mark Ellison

Committee Member

Jennifer VanGilder

Department Chair

Anthony Lobo

Department Chair

Eric Williamsen

Project Description

Bacteria can acquire resistance to antimicrobials in a multitude of ways, causing antibiotic resistance to be a growing public health concern. The goal of this project is to find strains with specific resistance mechanisms to understand the interaction between antibiotic-conjugated nanomaterials and the bacterial strains themselves. These mechanisms include efflux pumps, target site mutations, target blockers and antibiotic modifying enzymes. The hypothesis states that nanotube-conjugated antibiotics will be able to overcome the efflux pump resistance mechanism through creating steric hindrance that prevents the pump from removing them. After screening through 52 isolated Ciprofloxacin Resistant Coliforms (CRCs), strains that had a moderate level of resistance were selected and screened for the presence of plasmids. Strains with plasmids were conjugated with XL10-Gold. These Ciprofloxacin Resistant Transconjugants (CRTs) allow the plasmid to be better studied in strains that are designed to grow under laboratory conditions, rather than the wild coliforms that had been worked with earlier. In strain CRT34A it is likely that multi-drug efflux pump OqxA is present, allowing the mechanism to be further characterized to hopefully better understand the interaction with the nanomaterials in overcoming ciprofloxacin resistance.

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