Project:

Exploring Antimicrobial Properties of Lichen Extracts

Students:

Atika Sumya, Katelyn Reyes

School:

Long Beach High School, Nassau

Mentors:

Richard Lebowitz

Abstract:

Due to the increase in bacterial resistance to antibiotics, antibiotic shortages are a concern to the security of the global health system and need to be addressed immediately. Recent studies have shown that lichens are a new source of antibiotics and contain a variety of biologically active compounds, the majority of which have antimicrobial properties. (Sierra, M. A., et al. 2020) E. coli and S. epidermidis bacterial growth is dependent on the presence of lichen extract. The study proposed a hypothesis in which lichen extract suppresses bacterial growth in E. coli K-12 and S. epidermidis. The expected outcome of the project is to discover whether the collected samples inhibit the bacterial growth of E. coli K-12 and S. epidermidis. The use of used Kirby-Bauer disk diffusion susceptibility test is to detect pathogen resistance to various antimicrobial compounds in order to determine how much bacterial growth can be inhibited by lichen extracts samples- A1, A2, and A3.

Poster:

Team samples: