By Arianna Chase, Jay Boudreau
Faculty mentor: Dr. Swati Agrawal
Bacillus anthracis, the bacteria responsible for the serious infectious disease anthrax, can easily become antibiotic resistant. As inhalation anthrax has only a 55% survival rate with aggressive treatment, new ways of treating the disease have been looked at, alongside the similar bacteria, but less deadly, bacillus cereus. Phage therapy, deliberate bacteriophage infection, in conjunction with antibiotic treatment has been a main focus for new treatments. Non-virulent Bacillus strains B. Cereus, Delta Sterne, and Bacillus Thuringiensis (BTK) were grown in culture and used to test the efficacy of bacterial resistance with certain antibiotics commonly used in anthrax disease. The phages Jackrabbit and Jabbawakka, that had been previously isolated, were regrown to use in conjunction with the bacillus strains in order to determine if the bacillus resistant phage could induce an increased lytic response in bacteria that presented some antibiotic sensitivity. The results showed that the introduction of the isolated phages Jackrabbit and Jabbawakka did increase the sensitivity of BTK and B.Cereus in specific cases.
