Investigation of Nutrient Enrichment As The Main Cause of Antimicrobial Resistance Occurrence in Livestock Environments

The goal of this experiment is to use sterile nutrients to enrich the soil bacterial population to levels observed in cattle feedlot environments and observe the effects on the AMR bacterial population through culture based methods, using E. coli and enterococci as indicators of the native bacterial populations in the soil, and metagenomic approaches. Specific objectives: A. Determine the effect of enrichment on the levels of native antimicrobial resistant bacteria in soil using culture-based methods. B. Determine the effect of enrichment on the diversity and levels of native antimicrobial resistance genes in soil using metagenomic and quantitative PCR methods. C. Compare prevalence and levels of AMR bacterial populations and ARG from enrichments plots with those from feedlot environments.