Time-lapse video captures growth of antibiotic-producing bacteria

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We’ve been hearing the warnings for years: the overuse of antibiotics in medicine and agriculture has fostered the germs that are resistant to antibiotics.

McMaster’s own Gerry Wright, director of the Michael G. DeGroote Institute for Infectious Disease Research, says that the rise of so-called “superbugs” is the biggest public health challenge facing the globe.

That’s why Wright and his team are looking for new antibiotics – and developing new ways to find them.

Read: McMaster’s fight against ‘public enemy number one’ makes global headlines

Part of their strategy involves searching soil samples for bacteria that can produce new drugs.

“It turns out that bacteria that live in the soil are great producers of antibiotics and other medicine,” says Wright, adding many agree that soil bacteria and fungi are still the best source of new drug candidates.

Researchers in the lab isolate the bacteria and grow it to determine what each one can produce.

Below, we take a look at the growth of four such kinds of bacteria – recorded over the course of a week with a time-lapse camera – growing in a petri dish.