Summer 2010: Determining the Effect of Spacing in Protection of Staphylococcus aureus by Pseudomonas Aeruginosa

By Leonela Villegas and Leslie Shor, Ph.D.

The research that I have been conducting since the summer of 2010 includes the observation of two different types of biofilm-forming bacteria: Staphylococcus aureus and Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Using a quad microfluidic device that simulates a controlled environment, I observed the interactions between these two bacterias at various distances from one another when being in contact with Tobramycin to ultimately compare these results to other types of antibiotics. The reason for selecting these two types of bacteria is due to how Pseudomonas aeruginosa has been shown to produce an exoproduct named HQNO, which inhibits the growth of S.aureus yet causes resistant small variant colonies to appear. The bacteria are grown on a thin layer of oxygen sensing film, which uses the reporter molecule Pt(II) Porphyrin to measure bacterial activity based on fluorescence.

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