Great job on the experiment! I like how you talk about the result section of this experiment. If you could introduce the experiment and be a little more confident when doing the talk, it will be great ! How do you think your experiment will contribute to the medical field.
Hi Gavin! 🙂
I think our experiment is beneficial because 1, we discovered the effects of 100% DMSO on S. Typhimurium (it killed it) which was definitely news to us. 2, A previous drug discovery group studied both trans-Chalcone and 4-Nitrochalcone and if I’m remembering correctly they had positive reports for these compounds, so I think our experiment clarifies the downsides to using these compounds. Chalcones and derivatives of them are currently used to treat viral infections and stomach cancer among other things, so they are attractive potential antibiotics for researchers to study. Our results will hopefully help narrow down the chalcones researchers have to pick from!
I’m sure you had issues recording considering half of your presentation is missing.. However, I would like to ask what is is you were researching and why it is important. I would have loved to have seen a complete presentation form you.
Hi Sabrina! I am absolutely mortified watching this video, it seems I uploaded one of my outtakes instead of the full video. I promise the full video made much more sense, haha. Drug discovery lab researches compounds as potential new antibiotics for Typhoid fever! We do this because bacteria randomly mutate and sometimes end up with defensive mechanisms that protect them from the effects of antibiotics. As you can imagine, natural selection quickly selects for the resistant bacteria and soon you have a bacterial infection that is just completely resistant to the drug designed to combat it! The problem here is that we have not discovered any new antibiotics since the 1980s (most antibiotics were actually found by screening soil samples), and bacteria are mutating to become resistant to the drugs we already have. Our lab prioritizes this because pharmaceutical companies don’t get enough return on their investments when they do big compound screens since most of these compounds do not turn out to be “hits,” or potential antibiotics. So we do this part instead in hopes to find anything that could potentially help!
Hi! Could you elaborate further on the context for your research? You seem very knowledgable on the topic, and it would be great to know more about it!
Hi Harriet! So unfortunately I had some sort of uploading issue with my video and I must have submitted the wrong file, so I can understand why you don’t understand the context here. Our lab aims to find potential new antibiotics because antibiotic resistant bacterial infections are becoming a major threat to public health. According to the CDC’s last AR Report (antibiotic resistance report) in 2019, every year around 2.8 million people become infected with antibiotic resistant bacteria or fungi. These infections can be impossible to treat since we have not identified any new ways to target bacteria with antibiotics and they are becoming resistant to our current targets. My group decided to study trans-Chalcone and 4-Nitrochalcone, which are ketone based chemicals. Currently, chalcone derivatives are used for treating viral disorders, cardiovascular disease, stomach cancer & more, so my group and I thought if chalcones can effectively combat cancer growths, maybe they can combat bacterial growth as well! We went with trans-Chalcone & 4-Nitrochalcone because both of these compounds were readily available in our lab and we found modern studies using these compounds as antibiotic agents that were effective. Turns out we were wrong, but we still believe that chalcones/dervitives of them are a worthwhile chemical family to study!
Great job on the experiment! I like how you talk about the result section of this experiment. If you could introduce the experiment and be a little more confident when doing the talk, it will be great ! How do you think your experiment will contribute to the medical field.
Hi Gavin! 🙂
I think our experiment is beneficial because 1, we discovered the effects of 100% DMSO on S. Typhimurium (it killed it) which was definitely news to us. 2, A previous drug discovery group studied both trans-Chalcone and 4-Nitrochalcone and if I’m remembering correctly they had positive reports for these compounds, so I think our experiment clarifies the downsides to using these compounds. Chalcones and derivatives of them are currently used to treat viral infections and stomach cancer among other things, so they are attractive potential antibiotics for researchers to study. Our results will hopefully help narrow down the chalcones researchers have to pick from!
I’m sure you had issues recording considering half of your presentation is missing.. However, I would like to ask what is is you were researching and why it is important. I would have loved to have seen a complete presentation form you.
Hi Sabrina! I am absolutely mortified watching this video, it seems I uploaded one of my outtakes instead of the full video. I promise the full video made much more sense, haha. Drug discovery lab researches compounds as potential new antibiotics for Typhoid fever! We do this because bacteria randomly mutate and sometimes end up with defensive mechanisms that protect them from the effects of antibiotics. As you can imagine, natural selection quickly selects for the resistant bacteria and soon you have a bacterial infection that is just completely resistant to the drug designed to combat it! The problem here is that we have not discovered any new antibiotics since the 1980s (most antibiotics were actually found by screening soil samples), and bacteria are mutating to become resistant to the drugs we already have. Our lab prioritizes this because pharmaceutical companies don’t get enough return on their investments when they do big compound screens since most of these compounds do not turn out to be “hits,” or potential antibiotics. So we do this part instead in hopes to find anything that could potentially help!
Thank you for watching my presentation 🙂
Hi! Could you elaborate further on the context for your research? You seem very knowledgable on the topic, and it would be great to know more about it!
Hi Harriet! So unfortunately I had some sort of uploading issue with my video and I must have submitted the wrong file, so I can understand why you don’t understand the context here. Our lab aims to find potential new antibiotics because antibiotic resistant bacterial infections are becoming a major threat to public health. According to the CDC’s last AR Report (antibiotic resistance report) in 2019, every year around 2.8 million people become infected with antibiotic resistant bacteria or fungi. These infections can be impossible to treat since we have not identified any new ways to target bacteria with antibiotics and they are becoming resistant to our current targets. My group decided to study trans-Chalcone and 4-Nitrochalcone, which are ketone based chemicals. Currently, chalcone derivatives are used for treating viral disorders, cardiovascular disease, stomach cancer & more, so my group and I thought if chalcones can effectively combat cancer growths, maybe they can combat bacterial growth as well! We went with trans-Chalcone & 4-Nitrochalcone because both of these compounds were readily available in our lab and we found modern studies using these compounds as antibiotic agents that were effective. Turns out we were wrong, but we still believe that chalcones/dervitives of them are a worthwhile chemical family to study!