News Release
Student’s research gains global organization’s attention
May 6, 2009
A Penn State Harrisburg student’s undergraduate research has drawn the attention of the oldest and largest life science organization in the world.
Recent Life Sciences graduate and Harrisburg area native Rebekah Templin will present the results of two research projects at the 109th General Meeting of the American Society for Microbiology (ASM) in Philadelphia May 17 to 21. The society’s membership has grown from 59 scientists in 1899 to more than 43,000 today, with more than one-third located outside the United States.
Now headed for the master’s degree program in Immunology and Infectious Diseases at the Penn State College of Medicine in Hershey, Templin will present the results of the research projects undertaken while she was an undergrad, a rare occurrence for the prestigious ASM gathering.
“The Science program here at Penn State Harrisburg feels strongly that students must engage in research, in class and also independently with faculty,” Associate Professor of Environmental Microbiology Kathryn Baker points out. “Rebekah’s ambitious research agenda is reflected in the invitation for her to present before the ASM.” Templin adds, “My research work definitely helped me get accepted to graduate school.”
In the first project, Templin examined the effectiveness and negative impacts of using the ingredient triclosan as an anti-bacterial agent. Triclosan has been shown to be effective in reducing and controlling bacterial contamination on the hands and on treated products, but Templin has found that its overuse could cause resistant strains of bacteria to develop.
In her research, she treated soil with soap and water and with a soap, water, triclosan mix and found that the use of triclosan enabled resistant bacteria to more easily multiply. “One bacteria which multiplied rapidly was MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) which can be fatal,” Templin points out. “The bacteria multiply because there are no others to compete with it. Some bacteria are killed by triclosan, but the resistant multiply more rapidly. The research indicates that anti-bacterial cleansing agents may be more harmful in the long run that just plain soap and water.”
A recent study conducted at the University of California-Davis also indicates health risks connected with the widespread use of triclosan in personal hygiene products, claiming that it interferes with a type of signaling that occurs in brain, heart, and other cells.
For her second research effort, Templin examined fresh water flowing to and from a Pennsylvania fish hatchery for the presence of antibiotic-resistance microorganisms. “We’ve had a lot of antibiotics that worked 15 years ago, that don’t work anymore,” she says.
Her findings reveal that resistance to at least one antibiotic was found in more than 30 percent of the microbes and bacteria at the testing sites. More importantly, she found that the proportion of E. coli resistant to tetracycline in the hatchery water and downstream was significantly higher than upstream samples. “The results support the possibility of the hatchery as the source of tetracycline-resistant microorganisms even in the absence of recent use of this antibiotic.
“It is noteworthy that resistant microbes can donate genetic information to other microbes, making them resistant and causing infections in humans who come in contact or consume the contaminated water,” she adds.