Hello Jared! Lactobacillus acidophilus is naturally occurring in the mouth, intestinal tract, and vagina. It’s the environments in between the mouth and intestinal tract that we are worried about the survival of the bacteria. We didn’t get a chance to do much research about your question, but based on the difficulty we had culturing the Lactobacillus, it led us to believe that survival in the areas that it is not naturally occurring in is probably hard to accomplish.
Hi Madison! The model organism that was chosen, Salmonella Typhimurium, doesn’t avoid toxicity in drug development, rather the bacteria we chose to study, Lactobacillus acidophilus, does since it is already naturally occurring in the body. Therefore, adding it to your body is less invasive than introducing a foreign compound like most other drugs.
Hello Emily! We were planning on eventually co-culturing the bacteria together to see which one would outcompete the other. Since we were testing the Lactobacillus acidophilus as a type of antibiotic, we were hoping to see that it would outgrow the Salmonella and therefore could potentially be an effective treatment.
What are certain environmental factors that restrict bacteria growth, especially for Lactobacillus Acidophilus? And Salmonella Typhimurium? Because if lactobacillus acidophilus are able to grow in environments that salmonella typhimurium, could you use that to your advantage to outgrow and kill the bacteria in lab? This is probably not possible in clinical conditions, but just a thought. Great job!
Hello Thy! One thing that is interesting about Lactobacillus acidophilus is that it is microaerophilic, meaning it requires oxygen to grow but the amount of oxygen in the atmosphere is too much. Salmonella is incredibly easy to culture, however, we weren’t able to get it to grow on the only media that the Lactobacillus would grow on. If we had more time we would have definitely delved more into this topic.
Hi Molly! The reason it would avoid toxicity as opposed to other compounds used in drug development is because this bacteria is already naturally occurring in your body. Compounds that are also being studied have a higher chance of toxicity to the body since it is a foreign substance.
This was a really good presentation! It was really interesting that you chose to go with a bacterium rather than a regular drug for this project! I was wondering though, why did you choose Lactobacillus Acidophilus rather than another bacteria?
Hi Feriel! The reason we chose Lactobacillus acidophilus is because one of our group members actually had medical experience using a different strain of Lactobacillus as an antibiotic. From there were did some research and found a lot of potential antibiotic properties for the acidophilus strain, so we decided to test that specifically.
Is there any research about how Lactobacillus acidophilus survives in areas of the human body outside of the gastrointestinal tract?
Hello Jared! Lactobacillus acidophilus is naturally occurring in the mouth, intestinal tract, and vagina. It’s the environments in between the mouth and intestinal tract that we are worried about the survival of the bacteria. We didn’t get a chance to do much research about your question, but based on the difficulty we had culturing the Lactobacillus, it led us to believe that survival in the areas that it is not naturally occurring in is probably hard to accomplish.
how does the bacteria you chose to use avoid toxcicity in comparisson to using a different model organism?
Hi Madison! The model organism that was chosen, Salmonella Typhimurium, doesn’t avoid toxicity in drug development, rather the bacteria we chose to study, Lactobacillus acidophilus, does since it is already naturally occurring in the body. Therefore, adding it to your body is less invasive than introducing a foreign compound like most other drugs.
What is the purpose of co-culturing two types of bacteria together?
Hello Emily! We were planning on eventually co-culturing the bacteria together to see which one would outcompete the other. Since we were testing the Lactobacillus acidophilus as a type of antibiotic, we were hoping to see that it would outgrow the Salmonella and therefore could potentially be an effective treatment.
What are certain environmental factors that restrict bacteria growth, especially for Lactobacillus Acidophilus? And Salmonella Typhimurium? Because if lactobacillus acidophilus are able to grow in environments that salmonella typhimurium, could you use that to your advantage to outgrow and kill the bacteria in lab? This is probably not possible in clinical conditions, but just a thought. Great job!
Hello Thy! One thing that is interesting about Lactobacillus acidophilus is that it is microaerophilic, meaning it requires oxygen to grow but the amount of oxygen in the atmosphere is too much. Salmonella is incredibly easy to culture, however, we weren’t able to get it to grow on the only media that the Lactobacillus would grow on. If we had more time we would have definitely delved more into this topic.
Can you explain why you chose the unique bacteria a little more? What about it would avoid toxicity over the normal appraoch
Hi Molly! The reason it would avoid toxicity as opposed to other compounds used in drug development is because this bacteria is already naturally occurring in your body. Compounds that are also being studied have a higher chance of toxicity to the body since it is a foreign substance.
Can you explain why you used the bacteria you chose more? Why is that approach considered less toxic than the normal one?
This was a really good presentation! It was really interesting that you chose to go with a bacterium rather than a regular drug for this project! I was wondering though, why did you choose Lactobacillus Acidophilus rather than another bacteria?
Hi Feriel! The reason we chose Lactobacillus acidophilus is because one of our group members actually had medical experience using a different strain of Lactobacillus as an antibiotic. From there were did some research and found a lot of potential antibiotic properties for the acidophilus strain, so we decided to test that specifically.
I think your presentation was very clear! However, I was wondering what liquid MRS is?
Hello Daniel! Liquid MRS is just MRS media not mixed with agar to be put into a plate. Since there is no agar it just stays in liquid form.