Staphylococcus aureus

Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus) is a gram positive bacterium that when looked at under a microscope it appears to be a cluster of what looks like purple circles. This shape is known as cocci. When grown on a TSA plate, Staphylococcus aureus appears to be yellow to opaque in color. S. aureus is known as one of the most resistant bacterium to multiple antibiotics and considered the most pathogenic. Everyone is susceptible to S. aureus with one way of transmission being from foods such as chicken, eggs, meat, and tuna which can all cause food poisoning. Another way of transmitting the disease would be from your skin. Staphylococcus aureus resides on a person’s skin on a daily basis and when the barrier is broken from things such as cuts or wounds, this then provides an excellent entry way for the bacterium. Drug users are also extremely susceptible to this bacterium because they may choose to inject themselves with needles which can cause the likeliness of the bacterium entering your body (3). It has also been found that Staphylococcus aureus plays a huge role in Methicillin resistant Staphylococcal aureus otherwise termed MRSA. This bacterium can become resistant to many antibiotics such as methicillin, cephalosporins and erythromycin which make it much more difficult to treat. In order to try and treat MRSA vancomycin is administered to the patient. Even with this drug, researchers have found that MRSA is also becoming resistant to vancomycin as well. The prevention of this bacterium could help to minimize nosocomial infections by practicing good hygiene and appropriate cleansing of surgical incisions and burns (2).
In conclusion, it was found that the gram positive bacterium was indeed Staphylococcus aureus and the gram negative bacterium was Klebsiella pneumoniae. One problem that was difficult to overcome was maintaining sterile technique while inoculating both agar plates and test tubes. The isolation was difficult to do because two attempts were