Methods of Determining Antimicrobial Resistance in Bacteria Collected from Farm Soil

By 2050 antimicrobial resistant bacterial infections are predicted to be the leading cause of death worldwide. In this experiment, we aimed to determine if the amount of human traffic and use of antibiotics at a location had a significant impact on the bacterial community diversity and antibiotic resistance in each soil sample. We compared soil samples from the UMass campus, a local, antibiotic-using farm, and Foxcroft Farm, which does not use antibiotics. These soil samples were cultured on a non-selective media and exposed to antibiotics to determine antibiotic resistance and an estimate of the community diversity and population density. A DNA extraction was also performed on each soil sample, the results of which were then sequenced using next-gen sequencing. These data can then be interpreted using the MOTHUR program to quantify the community diversity of each sample and identify the presence of antibiotic-resistance conferring genes. The information from the culturomic and informatic analyses can be combined to make conclusions about the diversity and antibiotic resistance of the bacteria communities sampled.