Alcohol Resistance of Bacteria
Knowing how rapidly bacteria is evolving resistance to antibiotics and how dangerous antibiotic resistance is, especially to those in hospitals, we want to know whether or not bacteria can evolve resistance to alcohol. Today, hospitals rely heavily on alcohol to kill bacteria, so if bacteria does evolve to resist it, those in the hospital would be at risk of infection. In our experiment we are asking at what concentration does bacteria evolve resistance as a result of previous alcohol exposure? We hypothesize that bacteria will evolve tolerance to higher concentrations of alcohol as a result of being exposed to lower concentrations of alcohol. We predict that gram-negative bacteria will be more tolerant to higher concentrations of alcohol than gram-positive bacteria due to their impermeable cell membrane.
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