I didn’t know antibiotic resistance was such a huge issue for the upcoming years! For the future directions, how many trials in total would you have to perform, in order to confirm results?
There aren’t a specific amount of trials that we would need to do to confirm results but it would be more than ideal to run more than 1. Most of our peers did 3 or more trails so that would be our bare minimum requirement
You said that Melittin is very uncommon to exhibit antibiotic characteristics, is there a structural reason behind this that made you surprised it did function as one?
That is a great question but our research doesn’t cover the overall structure and the function of Melittin on the cell itself. So I wouldn’t know the exact answer.
Hi! Using the absorbance to determine how effectively it worked sounds really cool; how does it work that the amount of bacteria that died correlates with absorbance?
It is a one-to-one reading so if the absorbance on the spectrophotometer reads a statistically lower number than the control trail, then the bacteria died. If the number reads statistically higher than the control, then the bacteria grew.
What precautions were made when working with an infectious pathogen? You mentioned food poisoning, what safety measures were put in place to protect yourself when experimenting?
We used standard PPE in the lab which was gloves, “gowns” (aprons), eye protection, and long pants/closed-toed shoes. We also had different safety precautions such as washing our hands and cleaning our area before and after
Let’s say for example that we were testing bleach as an antimicrobial. It doesn’t require a high concentration of bleach to kill bacteria which is great because it is antimicrobial but it wouldn’t make an antibiotic because it also doesn’t require a high concentration of bleach to kill human cells as well. At different concentrations, bleach would be neutral and at a certain point, it would suddenly kill the bacteria. On a graph, it would look similar to our graph where it suddenly kills the bacteria. Then again, we would need to run a few more trails to get some concrete evidence that this is a possible antibiotic
curesymposium.org 
I didn’t know antibiotic resistance was such a huge issue for the upcoming years! For the future directions, how many trials in total would you have to perform, in order to confirm results?
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There aren’t a specific amount of trials that we would need to do to confirm results but it would be more than ideal to run more than 1. Most of our peers did 3 or more trails so that would be our bare minimum requirement
LikeLike
You said that Melittin is very uncommon to exhibit antibiotic characteristics, is there a structural reason behind this that made you surprised it did function as one?
LikeLike
That is a great question but our research doesn’t cover the overall structure and the function of Melittin on the cell itself. So I wouldn’t know the exact answer.
LikeLike
Hi! Using the absorbance to determine how effectively it worked sounds really cool; how does it work that the amount of bacteria that died correlates with absorbance?
LikeLike
It is a one-to-one reading so if the absorbance on the spectrophotometer reads a statistically lower number than the control trail, then the bacteria died. If the number reads statistically higher than the control, then the bacteria grew.
LikeLike
What precautions were made when working with an infectious pathogen? You mentioned food poisoning, what safety measures were put in place to protect yourself when experimenting?
LikeLike
We used standard PPE in the lab which was gloves, “gowns” (aprons), eye protection, and long pants/closed-toed shoes. We also had different safety precautions such as washing our hands and cleaning our area before and after
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Why does the jump in absorbance indicate Melittin may be toxic for humans?
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Let’s say for example that we were testing bleach as an antimicrobial. It doesn’t require a high concentration of bleach to kill bacteria which is great because it is antimicrobial but it wouldn’t make an antibiotic because it also doesn’t require a high concentration of bleach to kill human cells as well. At different concentrations, bleach would be neutral and at a certain point, it would suddenly kill the bacteria. On a graph, it would look similar to our graph where it suddenly kills the bacteria. Then again, we would need to run a few more trails to get some concrete evidence that this is a possible antibiotic
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