Small World Initiative: Research Protocols and Research Guide to Microbial and Chemical Diversity Package (two-book set)

This package is part of the official materials used in the Small World Initiative (SWI). This package is a two-book set which includes the Small World Initiative: Research Protocols, and Small World Initiative: Research Guide to Microbial and Chemical Diversity as a single bundled package.

Formulated at Yale University in 2012 by the author, Dr. Jo Handelsman, Small World Initiative (SWI) is an innovative program that inspires and retains students in the sciences while addressing a worldwide health threat the diminishing supply of effective antibiotics.

SWI centers around a discovery-based introductory biology course in which students from around the world perform hands-on field and laboratory research on soil samples in the hunt for new antibiotics. This is particularly relevant since over two thirds of antibiotics originate from soil bacteria or fungi.

Differentiating itself from traditional courses, SWI's biology course provides original research opportunities rather than relying on cookbook experiments with predetermined results. Through a series of student-driven experiments, students collect soil samples, isolate diverse bacteria, test their bacteria against clinically relevant microorganisms, and characterize those showing inhibitory activity.

SWI's approach also provides a platform to crowdsource antibiotic discovery by tapping into the intellectual power of many student researchers concurrently addressing a global challenge and advances promising candidates into the drug development pipeline. This unique class approach harnesses the power of active learning to achieve both educational and scientific goals.

Contents:

Small World Initiative: Research Guide -
SWI Overview
Introduction: The Antibiotic Crisis
1: Living on a Bacterial Planet (Devise a method to transfer microbes from a soil sample to a medium in the lab)
2: More Than Just Dirt (Find a local soil environment you wish to sample)
3: Redefining Growth and Culture (Find a method to isolate single colonies of bacteria from your soil sample)
4: Bacteria Are What They Eat, Too (Choose your own media and culture conditions)
5: Solid Versus Liquid Cultures (Isolate unique colonies to test for antibiotic production)
6: Meet the ESKAPE Pathogens (Understand the significance of the ESKAPE pathogens and using safe relatives in the lab)
7: Antibiotic Discovery, Structure, & Targets (Design a method to screen for antibiotic producers)
8: Getting to Know Your Isolates (Conduct initial identification of your antibiotic-producing isolate)
9: It All Comes Down to Chemistry (Test an organic extract of your isolate for antibiotic activity)
10: Resisting Antibiotics (Test your isolate s resistance to common antibiotics)
11: Classic versus Modern (Conduct biochemical characterization of your isolates)
12: Bacteria in Context (Assess your isolate s activity against eukaryotes, potential use as biological control, and ecological relationships with other organisms
Future Directions
Concluding Remarks

Small World Initiative: Research Protocols -
Lab Safety and Best Practices
Agarose Gel Electrophoresis
Aligning and Combining 16S rRNA Gene Sequences
Analyzing Organic Extracts for Antibiotic Production
Analyzing Sequences with BLAST Search
Antibiotic Resistance Test
Catalase Test
Colony Morphology
Colony PCR
Fermentation
Gram Stain
MacConkey Agar Test
Making Glycerol Stocks
Methanol Extraction
Obtaining Soil Sample
Picking and Patching Colonies
Plating Soil Sample
Screen for Isolate Antibiotic Production #1 Patch/Patch
Screen for Isolate Antibiotic Production #2 Spread/Patch
Screen for Isolate Antibiotic Production #3 Top Agar
Serial Dilutions
Silica Column Chromatography Protocol
Spread Plate
Streak Plate
Sulfide and Indole Production and Motility
Thin Layer Chromatography (TLC)
Typical Media Menu