Abstract
A pandemic of antibiotic resistance (AR) has been brewing and revealing itself for the past couple of decades, due to the abuse and overuse of antibiotics within hospitals, agriculture, and the environment. This is a world-wide issue, which threatens the body's ability to fight against simple infections. It is important to know the relevance of AR, which is the primary purpose of my research project: to test microbial samples taken directly from Sacramento State's campus and measure the amounts of resistance to five commonly used antibiotics. Antibiotic resistance is demonstrated when bacteria acquire the ability to survive in the presence of antibiotics meant to decrease their growth. AR genes are capable of persisting in the environment, and even evolving, which poses a risk to human health. Tiny Earth is one solution to this issue, as it is an academic network focusing on the discovery of new antibiotics from the soil. This project seeks to look at teh AR in antibiotic-producing bacteria.