Mapping Microbial Diversity of Culturable Strains in Oklahoma

Abigail Grathwohl, Casey Johnson, Samantha Shafer, Wouter Hoff

Abstract


Understanding the bacterial community that surrounds us is of utmost importance and is applicable to everyday life. By utilizing new bacterial species, we can increase sanitary measures, discover new way to produce biofuels, or even aid in antibiotic research; the applications are endless. In order to achieve a better understanding of the microbial community, we gathered an array of organic materials from regions such as Oklahoma and neighboring Midwest states, searching for novel microbial strains. Microbes in these organic samples were cultivated, identified as known or unknown, genetically sequenced, and the resulting data will be added to an online database system. Our results show that the majority of species that we gathered belong to the Genera Bacillus and Pseudomonas as well as fifteen unknown bacterial strains that we are further investigating.

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References


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