Week 11

 

Identification of Staphylococcus Aureus is important because it’s the major reason for “human bacterial infections” throughout the world. This bacterium can cause everything from trivial skin infections to major infections that lead to death. The reason being is that it can obtain resistance to antibiotics like penicillin and methicillin (DeLeo, 2010; Deurenberg & Stobberingh, 2008).  This “pathogenic Gram-positive bacterium” lives closer to us than we may think. It can be found in our nasal area and also our hands can be used as vectors to transfer the bacteria. Intact skin has a smaller chance of getting infected than wounded skin. It’s communicable through close contact and will last for months on any type of surface (Wertheima et al., 2005).

To identify the bacteria cultured from human skin, the methodology was slightly modified from how it was conducted in Aher, Roy, and Kumar’s 2012 study, “Molecular detection of virulence genes associated with pathogenicity of Gram positive isolates obtained from respiratory tract of apparently healthy as well as sick goats.” In that research, methods included obtaining nasal swabs, bacterial isolation,  incubation at 37° C, morphological identification based on Gram's staining, biochemical identification of Gram positive, DNA Extraction, Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) for amplification, identification of amplified genes based on fragments’ size. For more definite results, sequencing the DNA was also planned. Isolating DNA and observing its characteristic and functions can be done in order to classify them or do comparison on different DNAs for different reasons.

                                         Staphylococcus Aureus (Google image)