Honors Program

University Honors

Date of Award

5-2018

Thesis Professor(s)

Abbas G. Shilabin, Bert Lampson

Thesis Professor Department

Chemistry

Thesis Reader(s)

Bert Lampson, Gregory Bishop

Abstract

Due to increases in antibiotic resistance stemming from the overuse of commercial antibiotics, the need to discover novel antibacterial compounds is becoming more urgent. A species of Rhodococcus, MTM3W5.2, has been discovered and was found to produce a metabolite with inhibitory activity against closely related species. The aim of this study is to elucidate the structure of the inhibitory metabolite by isolating and purifying it; then characterizing it using spectroscopic techniques. The compound was isolated from MTM3W5.2 RM broth cultures using n-butanol extraction, which yielded an active crude extract. The crude extract was then subjected to fractionation using a Sephedex LH-20 column with a 100% methanol solvent. The inhibitory activity of the fractions was tested through disk diffusion assay using Rhodococcus erythropolis as an indicator. Further preparation was completed using preparative reverse-phase high-performance liquid chromatography. Advanced purification was conducted by multiple rounds of analytical reverse-phase HPLC. Throughout the study the HPLC fractions were characterized and stability was monitored using UV-Visible spectroscopy. Two pure samples at 58.xx and 72.xx minutes from HPLC collections were selected for further structural identification and are currently being studied using spectroscopic techniques, most notably 2D NMR

Publisher

East Tennessee State University

Document Type

Honors Thesis - Withheld

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

Copyright

Copyright by the authors.

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