Austin+T

toc =Discovering Antibiotics: = Shadowing Mr. Bright, a microbiologist. = =

Goals:
The goal of my shadowing experience is to learn some of the techniques of a microbiologist, and to also understand the effort and the different processes that Mr. Bright goes through in his lab. This project was about shadowing Mr. Bright and learning what it means to be a microbiologist. Techniques such as lyophilization, high-performance liquid chromatography, and testing antibiotics were the focus of my project. I wanted to learn more about a specific branch of microbiology. My goal was to see how microbiologists begin the long process of creating an antibiotic. They are the first ones to observe the bacteria before it is tested for about 10 years before it can be put on the shelf to be sold.

Discoveries:
After working with Mr. Bright for 7 days, I learned that even though bacteria are extremely small organisms they can be extremely useful to the world. Bacteria are first taken from the soil and tested to see if they produce an antibiotic. If they do then the microbiologists test it further to see if the antibiotic is new or not. And, if the bacteria passes this then it is tested to see if it is harmful to human cells. The process bacteria go through with microbiologists is nothing compared ot the overall length of time before the antibiotic can be sold. Each bacteria spends about two months with the microbiologists before it is shipped off to another company where it can be tested further. The microbiologists are an essential phase in the overall goal of creating an antibiotic because they are the ones that find the bacteria and see if there is even an antibiotic that should be looked into further.

Challenges:
There was only one real challenge during my shadowing experience. It was in one of the beginning steps where you have to take a petri dish of many different types of bacteria and get it down to having just one kind of bacteria per petri dish. When you have your petri dish in front of you, you have to take a plastic loop and scoop up all bacteria of the same kind. The next step is to streak these bacteria onto a separate petri dish. If all goes well then a week later that petri dish will only have the same bacteria on it that you streaked. The problem is that most of the time this is not the case. You may think that you scooped only one bacteria onto your loop, but the truth is that there may have easily been another kind on it as well. This causes a petri dish with more than one type of bacteria on and, so you have to restreak until you have each petri dish with only one kind of bacteria on it.

Solutions:
The only real solution to this problem is patience. When you streak your bacteria onto a new plate, you then have to wait about a week for the bacteria to grow and fill up the petri dish. Microbiologists go through this process of restreaking quite often when they are trying to isolate bacteria.

Looking Back:
I wish that I had spent more time asking Mr. Bright about the project he was working on. There are some bacteria that the microbiologists find that do not produce an antibiotic, so these bacteria are essentially useless to them. Mr. Bright was conducting an experiment where you introduce these bacteria to Mycolic Acid, which can actually cause the bacteria to produce an antibiotic. If perfected, this revolutionary technique can widen the amount of antibiotics available to the public, so more people can have the correct medicine for their sickness.

5 Things you should know:
1. When you are shadowing, schedule your hours as soon as possible. This forces you to start working on your project earlier, so you do not cram for time later on. 2. You should only pick a topic that catches your attention. When we learned about microbes, I still had many questions such as how antibiotics or antiviral medicine are created, so I talked to Mr. Bright about shadowing him who specializes in antibiotics. 3. You are already given a due date on the introduction and research, but you really should create a due date for yourself on the conclusion and photographic journal. You do not want to save both of these for the night before because they take a lot of time, and you do not want to hand in work that is not your best. 4. Take as many pictures as possible. Pictures make the presentation process a lot easier and help to convey what you learned in your project. 5. Have a backup plan. Your first pick for who you want to shadow may not be available during the times you are, so make sure you have another possible person to shadow or an idea on an experiment.