Thesis advisor: Tim Van Opijnen / Exposure to antibiotics has previously been shown to induce morphological changes
to bacterial cells in Escherichia coli and Staphylococcus aureus . Response profiles to
antibiotics representing various mechanisms of action provides as quick, reliable
and cheap means of identifying the mechanism of action of novel antimicrobials. We
evaluated whether similar cytological profiling was possible in the pathogenic
bacteria Streptococcus pneumoniae and whether there were any strain specific
differences in morphological changes resulting from antibiotic exposure. We
evaluated antibiotics from various classes and with different mechanisms of action
to develop strain specific models of phenotypic responses in order to identify
clustering associated with particular mechanisms of action. Various antibiotics
belonging to, cell wall synthesis inhibitors, protein synthesis inhibitors, and DNA
synthesis inhibitors were evaluated using S. pneumoniae strains TIGR4 and 19F.
Following exposure to high doses of antibiotics, cells were imaged for DNA and cell
wall components and analyzed. Our data shows that antibiotics of the same
mechanism of action induce similar morphological changes. While TIGR4 and 19F
show similar changes there are strain specific differences between them. Our data
shows that cytological profiling effectively indicates the mechanism of action
through imaging in S. pneumoniae allowing this technique to be used to study novel
antimicrobials as well as better understand bacterial responses to antibiotic stress. / Thesis (BS) — Boston College, 2019. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Biology.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:BOSTON/oai:dlib.bc.edu:bc-ir_108414 |
| Date | January 2019 |
| Creators | Hollyer, Marissa |
| Publisher | Boston College |
| Source Sets | Boston College |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text, thesis |
| Format | electronic, application/pdf |
| Rights | Copyright is held by the author, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise noted. |
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