Students search for new antibiotics in initiative that brings real science to classrooms

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Two unrelated problems may be helped by a single solution out of Madison.

One, a looming global health crisis, is the increasing resistance of pathogens to antibiotics.

Public school teachers participate in a training workshop to learn how to distill potential antibiotic-producing bacteria from locally collected soil samples. The program, called Tiny Earth, is run by the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery and seeks to keep students interested in science through hands-on research while contributing to global health through discovery of new antibiotics.

The other, an education issue, is the low interest and retention of students in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) fields.

A program out of UW-Madison’s Wisconsin Institute for Discovery is hoping to tackle both these issues at once with a program called “Tiny Earth.”

Sam Rikkers, executive director of Tiny Earth, explained their goals at a recent training event at Milwaukee Area Technical College. They aim to get students interested in science through hands-on research projects with potential for real-world results by testing local soils for new antibiotics.

Over the past 30 years, explained Rikkers, a lot of companies that had once invested in antibiotic discovery have pulled out because of a lack of return on investment — despite the increasing threat of antibiotic resistance to public health. The World Health Organization predicts it will be the biggest killer by 2050 and cost billions to society.

Meanwhile, he said, research shows that students who are engaging in authentic research — not just replicating experiments for the sake of gaining skills — are more likely to stay in STEM fields, finish STEM degrees and go onto STEM careers.

Around 70 percent of antibiotics currently in use came from bacteria living in soils. Through the Tiny Earth program, students collect their own soil samples locally and test them for the presence of bacteria that could be producing new antibiotics. They gain meaningful research experience while contributing to meaningful research.

“What’s neat about this is when they’re hunting for antibiotic-producing bacteria in the soil, they not only get to do their own research, their research is looking for potential answers to one of the greatest public health crises we’re facing right now,” Rikkers said.

Solutions in the classroom

Tiny Earth was started in 2012 by the now-director of the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery (and UW-Madison alumna), Jo Handelsman. At the time, she was at Yale University, trying out a new undergraduate course called “From Microbes to Molecules” on six students.

The program moved with Handelsman from Yale to UW-Madison while growing from a single course to a global network. Today, it has been implemented in 44 states, 14 countries and has reached 10,000 students.

Its latest expansion has been to Milwaukee in hopes of reaching a new frontier: public schools.

School teachers practiced extracting bacteria from soil samples and growing them in on Petri dishes at the Tiny Earth training event at MATC. Each spot visible on these plates is a colony of millions of bacteria.

“For years, we’ve not been able to crack the public schools,” Rikkers said. He said most of their programs have gone to universities and private or charter/magnet high schools that have a science focus. Public schools don’t typically have the lab spaces and other resources to do the program.

But Tiny Earth is working to change this. “We’re really excited about this training because this is our inaugural pilot to say, we think we can do this in a public high school setting,” Rikkers said.

The inspiration for expansion into the public schools came from two MATC instructors who went through the Tiny Earth training and told peers from Milwaukee Public Schools.

At the recent training event, teachers from MPS were joined by a teacher from New York Public Schools, a middle school teacher from Oak Creek and even a researcher planning to bring the program back to his home university in India.

“I’m always looking for ways to bring science to the students,” explained John Woida, instructor at Milwaukee’s Vincent High School. “Something with a real-world application, a component of discovery, and something that lets students feel like they’re a part of something larger. It’s an international program, and there’s a possibility that they could help somebody. They’re attracted to activism, and so this is an opportunity to do something somewhat activist.”

Rikkers said it costs around $600 to start a Tiny Earth course for 30 students for a semester, and most of that is start-up costs for equipment that would be re-used year after year. To cover costs in the public schools, some high school instructors are writing grants for funding, and Tiny Earth is fundraising.

Solutions in the soil

Nichole Broderick is the science and training director at Tiny Earth, an assistant professor of molecular and cell biology at the University of Connecticut and another UW-Madison alumna.

She explained that some bacteria produce antibiotics to kill other bacteria. They might do this if they are competing for resources like food or space. Other substances produced by bacteria can, in small doses, be used as a communication signal to other bacteria. They could say stay away, or trigger a change in behavior, or inspire cooperation. But sometimes changing the dose of these substances can change what is normally a helpful communication strategy for the bacteria into something lethal.

Finding new bacteria and growing them in a lab can be difficult — estimates say only 0.1 percent of soil microbes have been characterized by science. But, Broderick said, “It’s a numbers game. If we have thousands and thousands of students screening for these, even if we’re only hitting the tip of the iceberg, the one or two that are truly a new antibiotic are still more than if we weren’t doing this kind of screening.”

At the training event, area teachers went through the lab work, just as they would do with their students. They each brought in a soil sample that they collected locally to test.

“We’re really excited about doing this in Wisconsin. Wisconsin’s got incredible soil. We have really interesting soil properties across our state,” Rikkers said.

When students are running tests on soils that they collected themselves, locally, it further increases their connection to the research.

In a classroom running the Tiny Earth program, students first dilute their soil sample until they’re left with individual bacteria cells. Those cells are placed on a Petri dish where they can grow into a colony. The colony eventually (sometimes within 24 hours, sometimes much longer) becomes visible to the naked eye as a growing splotch on the dish.

From there, relatives of known diseases (never the disease-causing bacteria themselves) are added to the dish. As those grow into their own visible colonies, it becomes plainly visible if the bacteria from the soil is preventing the growth of the other bacteria. When that happens, it means the bacteria are producing some sort of antibiotic.

John Woida, science teacher at Vincent High School, uses a pipette during the Tiny Earth workshop held at MATC.

Rikkers said that a lot of students will rediscover penicillin. But some won't. The final steps in the antibiotic-discovery process require more sophisticated testing that would happen beyond the classroom. That’s why one of Tiny Earth’s plans is to start a hub in Madison that will serve as a clearinghouse for the antibiotics coming out of classrooms worldwide.

“Purpose-driven science rather than just doing science for the sake of doing it, I think, would be in line with what we're looking for to create culturally relevant and responsive classrooms,” said Rochelle Sandrin, science curriculum specialist for Milwaukee Public Schools. “Sampling the soil where you live is a way to make that connection that you matter. I think that's something that we need to do better in science, and do more frequently.”