Beef Farm Lab Report

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Adolfo Peraza Antibiotic Resistance Lab Report Introduction Antibiotic resistant genes are found on plasmids. Cattle feeders add antibiotics to the cattle food in enhance the growth of the cow. The bacteria become immune and resistant to this antibiotic. Tetracycline is a main antibiotic for the enhancement. Bacteria have been traced in E. coli that contain the antibiotic resistant gene. There are three farms that have been investigated by the FDA and have had contaminated meats. These farms are Speedy’s Beef Farm, Calli’s Cows and Bulls, and Green Acres Cattle. The research questions are: Is the bacterial contamination at these farms due to the same strain of bacteria or different strains? What is the frequency of tetracycline resistant bacteria in the cattle farm cultures? We will answer the questions by finding out if each bacteria is unique to a certain farm or all they all similar. Methods We performed serial dilutions on tetracycline plates. This helped us determine the frequency of tetracycline resistant bacteria I the original bacterial population. We used Polymerase Chain Reaction to amplify samples of the bacterial plasmid DNA. This allowed us to determine whether the three farms have a common form of bacteria that is resistant to tetracycline. In petri dishes each member of the team used dilution of 10-2 to 10-6. With a pipette we put 100μl sample of bacteria. The dishes were placed in an incubator for 24 hours then kept in a cold room until ready for the count of bacteria. Next we obtained the colonies and placed into a PCR mixture. We ran the PCR by placing an Agarose gel that will form a ladder. Once we formed the ladder we photographed the results. The equations we used to calculate the frequency and concentration of the gel was: number of colonies/dilution factor = concentration cells μl. Frequency = number of bacteria/total number of bacteria.

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