Antibiotic resistance is a global public health concern caused by the overuse and misuse of antibiotics. An estimated 23,000 patients die annually in the US. The majority of clinically important antibiotics used today are derived from soil bacteria. With the aid of biochemical and molecular tests, we identified antibiotic-producing bacteria and tested their antibiotic production against relatives of bacterial pathogens. Our microorganism was identified as Pseudomonas parafulva strain AJ2129 by comparing its RNA sequence to sequence databases using NCBI tools. MacConkey agar and eosin methylene blue agar test confirmed that the organism is gram-negative. We performed antibiotic susceptibility tests to identify potential bacterial targets and disk diffusion assays to characterize the antibiotic resistance profile of the antibiotic-producing bacteria. We found that the bacterium of interest was most resistant to Streptomycin and Tetracycline, which inhibit protein production by binding to the 30S ribosomal subunit. This information can help us identify resistance mechanisms and classify the antibiotic compounds expressed by the bacterium of interest. Further research on this bacterium could help isolate and characterize the antibiotic compound.
