The Solution To Antibiotic Resistance Could Be In The Viruses Of Your Kitchen Sponge

The researchers from the US have discovered viruses that can infect bacteria in kitchen sponges, and that cannot be eliminated only by antibiotics.
The study was presented Sunday at the annual meeting of the American Society of Microbiology that taught us and used the bacteria as bait and was identified in foods that feed on bacteria, which swallow bacteria from their used cooking sponges, reported the Xinhua news agency.
Researchers at the New York Institute of Technology (NYIT) discovered bacteria, viruses that infect bacteria and live in sponges in their kitchen. A measure that increases the threat of resistance to antibiotics, bacteriophages, or phages may be useful in combating bacteria that cannot be eliminated by antibiotics alone. The research is presented at ASM Microbe, the annual meeting of the American Society for Microbiology.
A kitchen sponge is exposed to all kinds of microbes, forming a vast microbiome of bacteria and food sources for animals.
The students in a research class isolated bacterium from their own used kitchen sponges and then used the bacteria as bait to find phages to attack. Two students successfully discovered the infections that live in the sponges of their kitchen. Brianna Weiss, student of life sciences at the Institute of Technology of New York, said that their study demonstrates the value in searching any microbial environment which could harbor potentially useful phages.
The researchers decided to "exchange" these two steps. As a result, the phages killed each other's bacteria. "This allowed us to ask if the strains of bacteria were coincidentally the same, although they come from two different sponges," Weiss said.
The researchers compared the DNA of both secluded strains of bacteria and found that they were both the members of the Enterobacteriaceae family. These bacteria belong to a group of microbes in the form of the rod that is found in the stool, where some causes can cause infections in the hospital. Although the strains are closely related, chemical changes are carried out when carrying out the biochemical tests.
Weiss added that these differences are important to understand the variety of bacteria. "To continue with our work, we hope to isolate and characterize more phages that can infect bacteria from a variety of microbial ecosystems, where some of these fables can be treated as bactericides.”, he further informed.
This project began as part of an undergraduate research class with seven students at the New York Institute of Technology (NYIT) in Old Westbury, New York. The course was funded through the internal grants provided by (NYIT), which also supported our further work to further characterize bacteria and bacteriophages. This second phase of our work is presented on a poster at ASM Microbe on Sunday, June 23.
Although the two bacterial strains are closely related, biochemical tests are performed.

By: Preeti Narula

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