Thank you! We elected to use cheese primarily because another team of researchers found evidence that Pecorino Romano in particular can have antimicrobial properties from a previous study. Cheese is also safe, cheap, and widely available!
I’m not sure why! However, there are countless tests concluding that it is true and Salmonella Typhimurium is frequently used for this kind of research, especially by amateur researchers, because it is safer for people while still being a good model due to the fact that it causes these symptoms in mice.
Do you have a specific reason why you chose cheese for this experiment? I saw that another student used Milk. Would that affect their results, like did it have to be a dairy product?
We chose to use Pecorino Romano because it is safe, natural, cheap, and available. In our preliminary research, we also discovered that cheese has been tested in the past and the results looked promising. The other group likely used milk for similar reasons as we used cheese, and people have commonly turned to natural/biological compounds in addition to more elemental compounds (ex. another group chose silver nanoparticles); because natural compounds are often safer.
Hello! I love the presentation and the unique approach of your research. I was wondering if you think cheese should be avoided if it is showing higher than the standard deviation? Do you think it promotes growth and people should avoid it because of this?
Hi! Thank you so much! Cheese showing the promotion of bacterial growth as a probiotic is definitely a red flag, however, I don’t think it should be fully counted out for further research. My hypothesis is that our extraction protocol did not work as well as the research team’s that we loosely based our study off of. I think if our extraction was more precise and isolated the specific peptides that they did, it would have yielded different results.
As for whether I think people should avoid cheese as a food, I don’t think so. We commonly and intentionally ingest probiotics (i.e. yogurt, another dairy product) to promote the growth of GOOD bacteria in our gut too! I don’t know much about whether there are negative impacts of eating our cheese if you have a Salmonella infection, but I doubt it would make an impact. Just because it helped the growth of Salmonella on a plate doesn’t mean it could make it through the digestive tract and still hold onto the same ability to aid the infection.
curesymposium.org 
Interesting background, cheese usage is unique.
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Thank you! We elected to use cheese primarily because another team of researchers found evidence that Pecorino Romano in particular can have antimicrobial properties from a previous study. Cheese is also safe, cheap, and widely available!
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Do you know why exactly Salmonella Typhimurium causes typhoid fever in mice and food poisoning in humans and not the same result in both species?
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I’m not sure why! However, there are countless tests concluding that it is true and Salmonella Typhimurium is frequently used for this kind of research, especially by amateur researchers, because it is safer for people while still being a good model due to the fact that it causes these symptoms in mice.
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Do you have a specific reason why you chose cheese for this experiment? I saw that another student used Milk. Would that affect their results, like did it have to be a dairy product?
LikeLike
We chose to use Pecorino Romano because it is safe, natural, cheap, and available. In our preliminary research, we also discovered that cheese has been tested in the past and the results looked promising. The other group likely used milk for similar reasons as we used cheese, and people have commonly turned to natural/biological compounds in addition to more elemental compounds (ex. another group chose silver nanoparticles); because natural compounds are often safer.
LikeLike
Hello! I love the presentation and the unique approach of your research. I was wondering if you think cheese should be avoided if it is showing higher than the standard deviation? Do you think it promotes growth and people should avoid it because of this?
LikeLike
Hi! Thank you so much! Cheese showing the promotion of bacterial growth as a probiotic is definitely a red flag, however, I don’t think it should be fully counted out for further research. My hypothesis is that our extraction protocol did not work as well as the research team’s that we loosely based our study off of. I think if our extraction was more precise and isolated the specific peptides that they did, it would have yielded different results.
As for whether I think people should avoid cheese as a food, I don’t think so. We commonly and intentionally ingest probiotics (i.e. yogurt, another dairy product) to promote the growth of GOOD bacteria in our gut too! I don’t know much about whether there are negative impacts of eating our cheese if you have a Salmonella infection, but I doubt it would make an impact. Just because it helped the growth of Salmonella on a plate doesn’t mean it could make it through the digestive tract and still hold onto the same ability to aid the infection.
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