Blog Post #12 – Conclusion
Sudeep V -
Hey everyone,
This is the final blog post in regards to my senior research project. Some concluding thoughts are that overall, there does seem to be a linkage between heavy metal and antibiotic resistance in D. Indicus bacteria. This linkage is only present for fluoroquinolone (ofloxacin) and aminoglycoside (streptomycin) class antibiotics, but it is notably absent for protein synthesis inhibitor antibiotics.
Additionally, the copper evolution process seems to be successful as a general principle for increasing the resistance of a bacterium to any sort of stressor.
For the future, I want to test more frontline-use antibiotics where AMR in pathogens may be more important. For example, amoxicillin and methicillin, both of which we have in the lab. I also want to test a wider range of antibiotics than just the three I have done so far to gain a more comprehensive understanding of the linkage phenomenon. Over the summer, I intend to test 4-6 more antibiotics, and if time permits, I would hope to do RNA sequencing analysis of both the experimental and control groups to identify which genes have been upregulated/downregulated throughout the evolution process.
It was a great 12 weeks!
Best,
Sudeep