ORCA Undergraduate Research Award – Final Report

While working on my undergraduate degree, I studied an interesting strain of Staphylococcus epidermidis. This particular strain produced an unidentified substance, which was lethal to other Gram-positive bacteria. I immediately thought that this substance might prove advantageous in treating infecti...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Daetwyler, Michael
Format: Text
Language:unknown
Published: BYU ScholarsArchive 2014
Subjects:
VRE
Online Access:https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/jur/vol2014/iss1/786
https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/context/jur/article/3125/viewcontent/auto_convert.pdf
Description
Summary:While working on my undergraduate degree, I studied an interesting strain of Staphylococcus epidermidis. This particular strain produced an unidentified substance, which was lethal to other Gram-positive bacteria. I immediately thought that this substance might prove advantageous in treating infections caused by antibiotic resistant bacteria. To begin investigating that possibility, I grew the strain of S. epidermidis near clinical isolates of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and vancomycinresistant Enterococcus (VRE), antibiotic resistant bacteria that plague hospital patients around the world. Amazingly, the strain of S. epidermidis was lethal to all of the isolates that it was tested against.