Team:Saint Joseph/Human Practices

What is the leading cause for health related deaths? Hearth diseases are ranked in the first place and cancer is ranked at the second. The third but not the least are infection based diseases. With the advancing technology, the first two are affecting lesser people because methods of preventing them are being developed. However, it’s the contrary for infection based diseases. Antibiotic resistance prevails. Conventional methods are inefficient. Therefore it is required to come up with an alternative solution which would diminish the use of antibiotics.

In our project, we focused on fish and on methods of antibiotic usage prevention for fish cultivation. In order to have substantiated knowledge on the problems that the fish farms face, we contacted numerous fish farms and aquariums. They pointed out that despite the implementation of antibiotics, most of the fish suffered from infections due to antibiotic resistant bacteria. Even though they didn’t mention the death rates -which are classified- they mentioned some of the most fatal bacteria species, such as V. anguillarum, V. collar and Aeromanas. Parting from the bacterias they mentioned, we chose V. anguillarum as our target pathogen which is both fatal and widespread.

Prof. Dr. Şule Arı gave a lecture -concerning our project- to the team. During the lecture she emphasized the necessity to diminish the use of antibiotics while giving a crash course on genetics. She noted that antibiotic resistance is the most important cause of infection related deaths. Consequently, raising awareness on this subject is indispensable.

Inspired by the lecture of Prof. Dr. Şule Arı, we set our responsibilities to accomplish what she emphasized to be indispensable. During the alumni gathering of our high school, “Petit Pain”, we set a stand, handed out flyers, explained why the use of antibiotics should be prevented. Even Mr. Mehmet Erbak, the CEO of Uludağ Beverages, offered us his sponsorship after observing our presentation.

We wanted our friends in school to be aware of this serious matter as well. So we prepared a detailed presentation to be presented to the whole school. We laid emphasis on why we should prevent the unnecessary usage of antibiotics and how to do it. We briefed them on how our project would serve this lofty purpose.

Moreover, we introduced our subject to the biology course. Now the classes who have the related subjects to our project, are able to examine our work. With this addition to the curriculum, we are able to reach a good deal more students.

Traveling to spread the IGEM love.