In your research, what was the most concerning thing you learned about bacterial infections? Is the world going in the right direction in terms of developing therapies and other ways to treat bacterial infections?
The most concerning thing I learned was how rapidly bacteria are able to evolve to produce antibiotic resistance. Being able to replicate so quickly allows them to rapidly accumulate genomic mutations, some of which will be beneficial in combatting effects of antibiotics. New candidates for antibiotics are being experimented on all the time, but not many have been found in recent years. However, phage therapy may be better to fight antibiotic resistant bacteria, as it can be genetically modified or can evolve alongside the strain to fight it, unlike a static antibacterial compound. Hopefully this research gains even more traction and will be included with antibiotics in fighting infections of pathogenic bacteria.
We’re unsure, but it’s possible the nucleases used to extract the DNA were not properly inactivated by the EDTA, so continued to digest the isolated DNA until it was fragmented.
In your research, what was the most concerning thing you learned about bacterial infections? Is the world going in the right direction in terms of developing therapies and other ways to treat bacterial infections?
The most concerning thing I learned was how rapidly bacteria are able to evolve to produce antibiotic resistance. Being able to replicate so quickly allows them to rapidly accumulate genomic mutations, some of which will be beneficial in combatting effects of antibiotics. New candidates for antibiotics are being experimented on all the time, but not many have been found in recent years. However, phage therapy may be better to fight antibiotic resistant bacteria, as it can be genetically modified or can evolve alongside the strain to fight it, unlike a static antibacterial compound. Hopefully this research gains even more traction and will be included with antibiotics in fighting infections of pathogenic bacteria.
Why did the DNA degrade for your quality control?
We’re unsure, but it’s possible the nucleases used to extract the DNA were not properly inactivated by the EDTA, so continued to digest the isolated DNA until it was fragmented.