Isolation of Selected Antibiotics Producing Soil Microorganisms

Abstract

Antibiotics have helped in achieving major advances in medicine. Many lives have been saved through use of antibiotics. The average lifespan in the 1920’s was 56.4 years old, but because of antibiotics use, U.S. average life span is now nearly 80 years old. There is currently a crisis in treating different infectious diseases. With the overuse of antibiotics, it provides selective pressure and kills sensitive bacteria. This is now a problem because 1/106 cells in bacteria culture carries a mutation that makes it resistant to antibiotics. With sensitive bacteria killed, this gives an opportunity for resistant bacteria to grow. In pharmaceutical companies, few new antibiotics have been discovered in the past decade, while more bacteria are becoming more resistant (Ventola, 2015).