Providing an Experimental Negative Control to Enable the Determining of Antibiotic Resistant Genes in Elizabethkingia miricola

Abstract

Beta-lactamase genes cause bacteria to be resistant to beta-lactam antibiotics(1). Our goal was to provide a negative control for experiments conducted to determine if genes from Elizabethkingia miricola were beta-lactam antibiotic resistant. We did this by testing a gene for a putative inhibitor of streptomycin rather than beta-lactam. By amplifying the gene, ligating it into plasmids, executing molecular cloning, and screening transformed cells, we successfully provided a negative control by which the other groups could compare their results and determine beta-lactam resistance.