Booth Id:
BMED065
Category:
Biomedical and Health Sciences
Year:
2023
Finalist Names:
Shah, Aksat (School: Roy C Ketcham Senior High School)
Abstract:
With the growing epidemic of antibiotic resistance curbing modern treatments’ efficacies, bacterial infections are becoming more dangerous every year. This experiment will test and compare the efficacy of antibiotics and natural antimicrobials, as well as the long term resistances of both via the use of E. Coli.
Hypothesis: All of the natural antibiotic alternatives may not perform better at killing bacteria, but will not lead to antibiotic resistance whereas the traditional antibiotics will.
This project was completed by growing 15 isolated cultures of K-12 strain E. Coli, and testing them with the antibiotics ampicillin and tetracycline, along with the natural antimicrobials of oregano oil, colloidal silver, and thieves oil. After the zones of inhibition have been measured, these zones will be swabbed and cultured twice, and then tested again to test the resistance of these substances.
This data proves that both were effective at killing E. Coli, though the antibiotics were significantly more effective due to having greater zones of inhibition. The antibiotics used had an average of 22 millimeters of inhibition, whereas the natural alternatives had averages of 13 millimeters of inhibition. However, in test 2, when the resistance of E. Coli was tested on said microbials, the antibiotics had a decrease in 5.5 mm whilst the natural alternatives saw decreases of 1 mm.
Although the antibiotics were much more effective with a larger zone of inhibition, the microorganisms developed resistance to natural alternatives at a significantly lower rate. This was proven as the decrease in zones was quite dramatic for the antibiotics, there was very little average decrease for the natural antimicrobials with no average decline whatsoever for the anti-fungal oil.