7.1 Back to the soil
Recent technological advances and innovations have allowed a much wider range of microbes to be cultured and novel species and new metabolites to be identified. For example, Activity 7 reveals how teixobactin was discovered in 2015 by a team of scientists in the USA who managed to isolate and culture a previously unidentified soil bacterium. Teixobactin is a new class of antibiotic which is active against Gram-negative but not Gram-positive bacteria (Ling et al., 2015).
Activity 7 Discovering teixobactin
Allow about 15 minutes
First, listen to the interview with Dr Kim Lewis, leader of the research team who discovered teixobactin.
Now put the steps below in the correct order to match the culturing technique described by Dr Lewis.
What are the advantages of this new technique?
Answer
It re-creates the normal growing conditions of the bacteria, allowing them to be successfully cultivated. The recovery rate by this method is 50% compared with only 1% of cells from soil samples cultured on a Petri dish (Ling et al., 2015).
OpenLearn - Understanding antibiotic resistance
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