Students found few resistant bacteria at Open house

Hendi Lamaj, Sena Gizem Süer, and Pol Cuesta Turull at Open house.

Each square centimetre of our skin can host close to a million microorganisms – bacteria and fungi that play an important role in our daily lives. With this as their starting point, Hendi Lamaj and Pol Cuesta Turull, students in the Bachelor’s Programme in Life Science, conducted an experiment during the Open house on 6 November.

Visitors were invited to provide samples from their hands and everyday items, such as mobile phones and jewellery, by leaving prints on agar plates – Petri dishes used to culture microorganisms. Some of the plates also contained antibiotics to test for the presence of ampicillin-resistant bacteria. A total of 31 samples were collected from volunteers curious to learn more about the microorganisms in their surroundings.

“The experiment was a way to showcase our programme in an entertaining and engaging manner while also tackling the important issue of antibiotic resistance,” says Teresa Frisan, programme co-director with Erik Chorell for the Bachelor’s Programme in Life Science.

Example of bacterial and fungal growth on an agar plate without ampicillin. Two types of bacterial colonies can be observed as well-defined round items: white colonies and yellow colonies. Fungal growth appears as bigger and not-rounded items.

ImageHendi Lamaj

After the samples were incubated for 48 hours at a temperature of 37 degrees Celsius, the results were analysed. All 31 regular agar plates showed growth of both bacteria and fungi. Among the plates with antibiotics, only two showed growth of microorganisms, in the form of small bacterial colonies.

“We are pleasantly surprised by the results gathered. The growth of bacteria was a lot lower than expected and the antibiotic-resistant growth was very minimal. This implies that the most common bacteria in the university environment do not carry ampicillin antimicrobial resistance yet,” says Teresa Frisan.