CUR - The Council on Undergraduate Research

Investigating Colletochtrichum’s Antibacterial Potential

Francisco Beltran, Lisa Vaillancourt, Plant Pathology Department/ Steven Van Lanen, Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of Kentucky, 410 Administration Dr, Lexington, KY 40506-0032

Historically, many agricultural products have been the basis of groundbreaking medical innovations. A notable example being the fungus penicillium, invented in the 20th century, this organism is responsible for an entire class of medicine. Colletochtrichum or “Bitter rot”, a widespread plant pathogen in Kentucky, is no different. Through a collaborative research effort between the labs of the College of Agriculture and College of Pharmacy at the University of Kentucky—a novel antibiotic has been discovered. This pharmaceutical compound has been proven to be effective against gram (-) bacteria. In the face of a rising amount of antibiotic resistant superbugs (such as Methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus, MRSA), this is ecstatic news. This revolutionary discovery is produced somewhere between the interaction of the fungus and apple media to ward off microbiological competition. Therefore, raw infected apple tissue was extracted for its secondary metabolites and later showed positive results in minimum inhibitory concentration tests (MIC). High Performance Liquid Chromotography (HPLC) readings, meanwhile, show no known links to current antibiotics. Although, this therapy is still in its developmental infancy, the involved research groups hope to manipulate Colletotrichum’s sequenced genome to streamline its production synthetically. The College of Agriculture and Pharmacy aspires that eventually one day this discovery will open up numerous doors of treatment for patients with preventable bacterial infections. 

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