Victoria:
Our guest this week is Lisa Stein. She is in her final year of a master’s in the Department of Medical Microbiology at the University of Stellenbosch in Cape Town, South Africa. She got her bachelor’s degree in Molecular Biology and Biotechnology and her honors in Medical Microbiology at the University of Stellenbosch. As a microbiologist, Lisa studies the spread of antibiotic resistance in gram-negative bacteria in hospital and community settings. She also considers how this increased resistance may impact future treatment of infections with antibiotics.
This week’s questions were submitted by the listeners through emails and on social media and by students at Bromwell Elementary in Denver, Colorado. Thank you so much for talking to us today.
Lisa Stein:
My pleasure. I’m very excited.
Victoria:
Do you have anything you’d like to add to that introduction or do you think I kind of covered the basics?
Lisa Stein:
I think you’ve covered the basics. Yeah.
Victoria:
(Bixby – How do you get sick from bacteria?)
Okay. Sounds good with that. We can get into the questions. This first question is from Bixby. How do you get sick from bacteria?
Lisa Stein:
So I just want to provide a little bit of backgrounds. Bacteria, these tiny little organisms that you can’t really see without a microscope.
And they actually live naturally all over your body, in your nose, on your skin, even in your stomach. And these bacteria actually live in harmony with the human body, and they don’t really call sickness.
But sometimes you actually get exposed to other kinds of bacteria that can cause diseases, and this can happen through people who are sick, things in your environments, or even from eating food or drinking the water that may be dirty or contaminated. And when these bad bacteria come into your body, they actually eat the nutrients that are circulating around, and they produce toxins, which are proteins that are like poisons to the body. And these are actually what make you sick.
Victoria:
That’s interesting. I never knew that it was the toxins that made us sick.
Lisa Stein:
Yeah, yeah. Bacteria produce different kinds of toxins, some produce like toxins that make you sick, some produce toxins that actually like happen over a slower period of time. So that’s why you can sometimes get food poisoning like immediately, or it can take a couple of days.
Victoria:
Oh, wow.
Lisa Stein:
Yeah.
Victoria:
That makes me rethink every time food poisoning now.
Lisa Stein:
Yeah. It’s quite an amazing thing to think about, like sometimes it doesn’t feel immediate, like three days later you could get sick, and you’re like could that have been what I ate? Like, I know I ate something weird, but it seems a bit late, which can actually happen.
Victoria:
(Ellsworth – How are antibiotics made?)
Yeah. Oh, interesting. Okay. This is a good follow-up question from Ellsworth. How are antibiotics made?
Lisa Stein:
So, this is really interesting to me. Because I think it was in 1928, almost a hundred years ago if you think about it, a man by the name of Alexandra Fleming discovered what was the first antibiotic, and we all know today is penicillin. And he actually discovered this when he’s found like this fuzzy growth which is actually mold. And he found that this was actually like almost eating the bacteria. So the actual first antibiotic was made from mold.
Today, antibiotics aren’t so much made from these molds. But there are actually chemical substances that are derive from these original natural sources.
Victoria:
(Gabriela – How do medicine like antibiotics work?)
Cool. All right, this is another good follow-up question from Gabriela. How do medicines like antibiotics work?
Lisa Stein:
So antibiotics or chemicals that can help your body fight harmful bacteria that make you sick. And they actually work by when you take them, they go into the body and they target the bacteria that are there. And what they do is they either kill the bacterial cells or they work by making them stop growing. So the antibiotics can actually tell the difference between the bacteria and your normal cells so that they don’t actually hurt your body and only work on bacteria.
And it’s actually just really important to note is that antibiotics only work on bacteria but not viruses.
Victoria:
So that’s why sometimes when you get sick, you’re given an antibiotic if it’s a bacteria, and then sometimes you’re not, if it’s a virus, right?
Lisa Stein:
Exactly. Exactly. Because they won’t work on viruses.
Victoria:
(Aelig – When was resistant bacteria first discovered and how was it discovered?)
Okay, cool. This next question is from Aelig. When was resistant bacteria first discovered and how was it discovered?
Lisa Stein:
So I actually had to go back and do a little bit of research on this one. But it turns out that the first case of antibiotic resistance was discovered in 1947. And this was actually found against bacteria knowing as Staphylococcus aureus. So this was actually the first resistant bacteria. And it’s quite interesting to know that this was actually only four years after antibiotics had started to be used on like a large scale, and only 19 years after the first antibiotic was discovered. So if you think about it, it didn’t take that long for antibiotic resistance to develop.
So, I mean, I don’t know the exact way it was discovered, but I can only assume that someone came in with a bacterial infection, much like it is today, and he wasn’t getting better with the use of penicillin. So it must’ve been quite scary at the time to see those.
Victoria:
(Jack – Why are some bacteria resistant to medicine?)
Yeah. Wow. And this is a good question to talk a little bit more about that from Jack. Why are some bacteria resistant to antibiotics?
Lisa Stein:
So when your body is actually exposed to these antibiotics a lot, or sometimes you take antibiotics when you don’t need them, the antibiotics can stop working against the bacteria. So that’s actually happens because bacteria are very clever. They learn to defend themselves against these antibiotics, and they gain what called antibiotic resistance genes. And sometimes these genes are found naturally in the bacteria, and this is known as intrinsic resistance. Or they get them from others bacteria through process like trading cards, which is called acquired resistance.
And these resistance genes actually protect these bacteria from the antibiotic through a variety of different ways. Like for instance, the bacteria, once the antibiotics comes in and goes into bacteria cell, the bacteria actually have developed a way to pump that antibiotic right back out, so that it never actually gets to work.
Victoria:
Wow.
Lisa Stein:
So that’s just one example, and it’s like so many, so many. So it’s pretty interesting.
Victoria:
That’s crazy. And just to clarify with the genes that is part of the bacteria’s DNA, right?
Lisa Stein:
Some of them are. But the acquired resistance genes that I speak about are actually belong something called plasmids, which are these mobile elements, or they’re kind of like jumping beans. They jump from one bacterium to another, and these are actually separate to the bacteria DNA itself. So it’s actually like, just like its own self thing, itself DNA. So it’s actually just, they did it and they take it in, but they can actually get rid of it again if they don’t need it later. So yeah, it’s quite interesting. Like when they need them, they take them, but when they don’t need them anymore, they just release them.
And these acquired resistance, actually help protect the bacteria to, you know, allow it to survive in the environment. It even happens with droughts, like bacteria that rely on water even gets like what are called stress genes, and these protect them from certain environments that may make them die, but they get these genes that allow them to survive. So it’s very interesting.
Victoria:
Oh, wow. And so like within your body, these plasmids that have the genes, they just like move from bacteria to bacteria whenever a bacteria might need a gene to help?
Lisa Stein:
Exactly. Exactly. So those bacteria that sometimes, you know, when you take these to say you’ve taken penicillin too much and you can no longer take penicillin because the bacteria in your body are resistance, they may have traded these genes between each other.
Victoria:
That’s crazy.
Lisa Stein:
It’s pretty amazing what they can do, you know.
Victoria:
(Laura – What happens to the bacteria when its resistant to medicine?)
Oh my goodness. Okay. Back to the questions. This question is from Laura. What happens to the bacteria when it’s resistant to medicine?
Lisa Stein:
So just following on what I said earlier, like when people are given antibiotics too much, or they stop taking their medicines too soon, that sometimes allows the bacteria like a chance to survive.
And then it develops resistance through this acquisition or like, you know, getting these little resistance genes, and then they’re less likely to be affected by the antibiotics in the future. And it’s actually really interesting. So bacteria can develop and gain resistance to more than one antibiotic. And these are actually known as multidrug resistance, and they become very much more difficult to treat.
Victoria:
(Laura – What does resistant bacteria do to your body?)
Wow. This is another question from Laura. What does the resistance do to your body?
Lisa Stein:
So the resistant bacteria are actually like any other bad bacteria in the beginning, they just make you sick. But you know, when it actually becomes obvious that these bacteria are resistant, it becomes a little bit more difficult to treat them. So it may mean that you stay sick for a longer period of time or possibly even mean that you can’t be treated if you have a bacteria that’s extreme drug resistant, meaning it’s actually resistant to all the antibiotics that are possibly on the markets. But it’s also really important to remember that antibiotic resistance only develops in the bacteria themselves, and it’s not actually a body that becomes resistant. So sometimes you do get bacteria that come into your system that all sensitive to antibiotics can be treated, but sometimes you don’t and you get these resistant ones. So it’s really like luck of the draw or something.
Victoria:
(Stella – Are there different types of resistant bacteria?)
Yikes. Okay. Stella wants to know. And you kind of hinted at this a little bit. Are there different types of resistant bacteria?
Lisa Stein:
In general, they’re actually a lot of different kinds of bacteria out there. But they’re mainly grouped into two classes and they’re known as gram-negative and gram-positive. And this is actually based on what they look like under the microscope. So every bacteria has a cell wall. Just like we have skin, the cell wall is what like protects the bacteria. And the gram-negative bacterial are pink and red, and the gram-positive bacteria are purple when they are staining with a special dye that actually goes into the cell wall. And this led scientists like see them visually and try to tell the difference between them.
But we would actually talk about resistance. We talk about like I previously mentioned the resistance genes, and the trading cards, that they kind of behave as and of these there’s actually 400 different resistant gene types. That can be found either in gram-negative and positive or across. So some gram-negative resistance genes are only associate with gram-negative, and some what we need associated with gram-positive. And there are actually some bacteria that are likely to become more resistant than others. And one of these is actually Mycoplasma pneumoniae,which causes the illness pneumonia.
Victoria:
(Sarah – What does resistant bacteria look like?)
Wow. And that answers the next question from Sarah. What does resistant bacteria look like?
Lisa Stein:
So this is really interesting, because actually when you look at resistant bacteria, just under the microscope, you can’t tell the difference. You know, they actually look the same as whether they are gram-negative or gram-positive. They’ll still stay in red or pink if they’re gram-negative or purple if they’re gram-positive. So you can’t actually just look up at them under the microscope and go, Oh wow, that’s a resistant bacteria.
But we’ve actually developed these visual ways to tell the difference. And what we do is we use Petri dishes. And this Petri dish contains media and the media contains different nutrients that helps the bacteria to grow, and they eat this and they grow. On the media, you actually put an antibiotic, so the antibiotic you maybe want to test against. And when the bacteria grow on this Petri dish, what happens is there’s a circle sometimes around this antibiotic. And if there’s a big circle, it means that bacteria are not resistant. But if there’s a little circle or there’s no circle at all, then that’s how you can actually tell if the bacteria are resistant.
Victoria:
Oh, interesting. Cause if they’re resistant, they just like eat right through it, right?
Lisa Stein:
Exactly. That’s it. The antibiotic doesn’t bother them whatsoever. Whereas like the sensitive ones, obviously, like they can’t continue growing cause the antibiotic is killing them or preventing the growth. Yeah.
Victoria:
(Sydney – How many people get resistant bacteria?)
Oh my gosh. That’s crazy. All right. The next question is from Sydney. How many people get resistant bacteria?
Lisa Stein:
So, you know, it’s actually, antibiotic resistance happens all over the world, because antibiotics are used all over the world. But there’s actually no real number ready right now who actually gets resistant bacteria because every hospital on the world or every country in the world has different systems for measuring.
But I’ll give you an example in the United States, in 2019, it was estimated that over 2.8 million people to then have antibiotic resistant bacterial infections.
Victoria:
Oh man.
Lisa Stein:
And a portion of these people unfortunately do pass away. It’s a big number if you think about it. That’s a lot of people.
Victoria:
Yeah. So it’s good that we have people like you who are researching this.
Lisa Stein:
Exactly. Like, you know, there’s a large portion of people out there, like me microbiologists who are really just looking for an answer to this nonsense.
Victoria:
That’s good. Yeah. My dad had MRSA a couple of years ago and I forget how many rounds of antibiotics he was on, but he was on a lot before it’s started.
Lisa Stein:
I can imagine. MRSA, we call it, is actually gram-positive and that’s yeah, that’s actually Staphylococcus aureus, in which the first case of antibiotic resistance was discovered in. So it’s interesting, you know, how it’s continued onwards until like even now 2020.
Victoria:
(Caroline – Are some people more likely to get resistant bacteria infections?)
Yeah. Oh my gosh. I didn’t know that. That’s interesting. Okay, this next question is from Caroline. Are some people more likely to get resistant bacteria infections?
Lisa Stein:
So usually the people that are more risk tend to be older people or people with very low immune systems. Because you know, they can’t really fight off the bacteria as well as like younger, healthy people.
And to add to this you find that the people that are definitely most, most at risk are those that actually spend very long periods of time in hospital settings. So these infections tend to develop when they are in the hospital and if they don’t develop inside the hospital when they leave, sometimes the infection will only appear then. So, yeah. It’s just unfortunate that hospitals are big source of these resistant infections.
Victoria:
(Ella – Can you prevent somebody from resistant bacteria before they get it?)
Yeah. Okay. This next question is from Ella. Can you prevent somebody from getting resistant bacteria before they get it?
Lisa Stein:
So the tough one. It’s really, the truth is that nobody is completely protected from getting these resistant bacterial infections. But there are some things that you can do to protect yourself. I guess it’s the standard things like always keep your hands clean by washing with soap and water. You know, and because most bacteria are spread through air when people sneeze or cough or even through touch, you know, when they touch a door knob and all these things, your best bet is always to keep your hands clean, you know. If you go to the bathroom, make sure, you know, you’re washing your hands and don’t try and touch the door knob. Or, you know, if you have sick friends or sick family, try not to go near them because you know, you don’t really know. And you know, these are the kinds of things that can spread bacteria. And it is the best way to protect yourself, right, is hand washing, to be quite honest.
Victoria:
(Isabella – Are you able to get resistant bacteria out of your body?)
That is good to know. This next question is from Isabella. Are you able to get resistant bacteria out of your body?
Lisa Stein:
So, you know, sometimes when a specific antibiotic stops working, the doctors can sometimes give you another one that will get rid of this resistant bacteria. But like, as I previously mentioned, some of these bacteria can unfortunately have more than one resistance gene. So it becomes a little bit more difficult to find the right antibiotic to get rid of them. But most of the time, you know, you do find that people have a lot of options, you know, it’s not just that there may be resistant to one antibiotic and or two. So sometimes there’s a third or fourth option. It’s lucky because like myself, we can actually test these bacteria from your body to actually see which antibiotics can still work for them. So this actually speeds up the process and this can help make you better.
Victoria:
Cool. And do you do that with what you said with the Petri dish where you put them in the Petri dish?
Lisa Stein:
Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. There’re faster ways now to do it. Like you have machines now that can do it for you, but in the past, and even me as a research scientist, we still do it on the Petri dishes.
Victoria:
(Caroline – Why is it such a problem in hospitals?)
Oh, wow. This next question is from Caroline. And we talked about this a little bit, but Caroline wants to know why is it such a problem in hospitals?
Lisa Stein:
So I think I previously mentioned that antibiotics so widely used in hospitals, so that hospitals eventually become these like big pools of antibiotic resistant bacteria that can unfortunately get carried around by hospital staff. Or sometimes they get spread onto like machinery or things like that. So this can often result in you developing what are known as healthcare associated infections.
Victoria:
(Sarah – What can people do to take precautions to avoid resistant bacteria? Especially when they have to go to the hospital?)
Oh man. Sarah wants to know what can people do to take precautions to avoid resistant bacteria? Especially when they have to go to the hospital?
Lisa Stein:
So, you know, when you cut yourself or anything like that, your best bet is always to make sure that, you know, any open wounds you have are cleaned and covered and you make sure that they’re covered until they heal.
You know, as I said before, wash your hands, keep them clean. You know, this is the best way to protect yourself.
But there’s also vaccines out there against certain preventable bacterial diseases. And you know, you should always make sure like you’re vaccinated against them as well as like, whatever vaccines are for the viruses.
And you know, to be doubly precautious, like, you know, when you’re on antibiotics, just make sure you always use them property. Never share them with family or friends. Cause you know, this misuse can actually increase the resistant bacteria that was circulating and these are actually precautions you can take both in and out of the hospital.
Victoria:
Yeah. So like, when your doctor says to finish the bottle, you should finish the bottle. Right?
Lisa Stein:
Exactly. Always finish, always finish it. Yeah. Cause sometimes, you know, we feel better and then you’re like, Oh, I’ll stop. But you actually don’t realize that maybe by doing this, there’s like one little bacteria that survives, and then one little bacteria then decides to reproduce. And now it’s not just one bacteria anymore, you know?
Victoria:
(Ava – How hard is it to research and find medicine and ways to help people with resistant bacteria?)
Oh my gosh. Yeah. Okay, this next question is from Ava. How hard is it to research and find medicine and ways to help people with resistant bacteria?
Lisa Stein:
So, it’s become actually very difficult to find new antibiotics that work against these bacteria. Because, you know, the overuse of antibiotics means more bacteria have more resistance genes. So, there’s a lot more you’ve actually got an account for now. And a lot of the time what happens is, for instance with penicillin, it actually belongs to a family. So there’s other antibiotics, it’s synthetic, all these chemical ones I was talking about, that are chemical substances that are derived from penicillin. But sometimes they can become resistant to a whole family sometimes. So eventually, sometimes making new derivatives doesn’t always help. So our best bet right now is to find a new kind of antibiotic that will work.
But the unfortunate part about this is that it actually takes us a long time before we can actually find these new antibiotics. And even after this, it takes even longer time to get them approved. But, you know, every day there’s so much new research being done out there and they’re not just looking at antibiotics and morbid, like new things. So, you know, hopefully with these new discoveries, we’ll find something completely different to defeat these resistant bacteria that they can’t become resistant to. So, you know, that’s what we have hopeful for the future. Yeah.
Victoria:
(Benjamin – Is resistant bacteria similar to COVID?)
Oh, that’s good. Okay. Switching gears a little bit. Still talking about resistant bacteria, but Benjamin wants to know is resistant bacteria similar to COVID?
Lisa Stein:
So this is a really interesting question. so bacteria and COVID are different, because COVID is a virus.
And viruses actually behaved differently to bacteria, and viruses have to be inside and living cell to grow and replicate, because they actually can survive outside of a living thing. So they can dry dormant or like they can be sleeping in the environments, but they can’t necessarily be alive and functioning and replicating. So they actually need to be inside something like a plant or an animal or a human, and this living environment is called the host.
While bacteria are a little bit different. They can actually survive and replicate inside or outside of a host. So, they don’t need, you know, these plants, these animals, or even human bodies to survive. So it just obviously provide them, you know, with enough nutrients to like keep living for longer or, you know, replicating for longer, but they actually don’t necessarily need it the way viruses do.
Victoria:
Okay. So that’s why it’s a problem in hospitals because the bacteria can live like on the surfaces of things in the hospital.
Lisa Stein:
Exactly. Like you find viruses once they hit the surface of something, they don’t survive as long. So they’ll survive for a little bit, but they won’t survive for like these extended periods of time that, that bacteria do.
Victoria:
(Melanie – Do you study bacteria in Petri dishes?)
Oh, wow. Interesting. Okay. This next question is from Melanie. And you’ve talked about this a lot already, but if you have anything to add. Do you study bacteria in Petri dishes?
Lisa Stein:
So, as I mentioned before, I do. You know, what I do in some of my research, I take the bacteria and grow them on what I previously mentioned the media. And you actually get different kinds of media made up of different kinds of nutrients, depending on what bacteria you actually want to grow. So some of these nutrients can actually select for gram positives. Some can select for gram negative. So, you know, like it kinda makes research a little bit easier.
And this actually allows you to visually look at bacteria, you know, previously said, you can only see it under microscope. And that’s true when you’re looking at single cells. But this way we can actually look at bacteria on what is known as colonies, which are actually made up of more than like a million little bacterial cells. So they’re produce little clumps, which actually allowed you to kind of, to see them. And from this, sometimes you can actually tell what the bacteria is because they sometimes develop like a certain look or a certain color. So this actually helps like determining what like having to do, if you’re really experienced, you know, you can just look at the plate and be like, wow, that’s like a Klebsiella.
That’s like kind of a nice way of using Petri dishes.
Victoria:
That’s cool. When I was in middle school, I did a school project where my friend and I went around and we took a cotton swab and we wiped it on all of these different surfaces around our school. And then we would rub the cotton swab in a Petri dish and we would see how much bacteria grew.
Lisa Stein:
Yeah. It’s kinda scary.
Victoria:
Yeah, it was really scary. It was really gross too. Like the floor of the gym had more bacteria than the toilet seat.
Lisa Stein:
That’s scary and kind of not surprising, they did a study here at one of the universities where they swabbed I think the door handles and the toilets, the first toilets in like a row of stalls and the last one. And you actually find that the first toilet is one of the cleanest, because people always assume that everyone goes into that one. So no one goes into it, right?
Victoria:
Oh my goodness.
Lisa Stein:
Yeah. So I always, when I have to go to the bathroom, I’m going to use the first.
Victoria:
I’m going to start doing that now. Oh, man. That is so interesting.
Lisa Stein:
You pick up a lot of things, you know, like a lot of interesting things. It’s very interesting to see what you actually would assume is very dirty, and then sometimes what actually turns out to be a lot dirtier than, you know, the thing you thought would be. Like, it does ruin your life a little bit as much. You can’t always let it get to you.
Victoria:
I’m sure there’s a lot of things that you look at that are just not the same as they were.
Lisa Stein:
Someone kinda like lean in for a hand shake and I’m like, even before Corona, I was like, hmm, maybe not like, Hey, how’s it going?
Victoria:
(Ali – What made you want to be a scientist?)
Yeah. Oh man. Okay, switching gears a little bit. We’ve got a couple of questions about you and your career as a scientist. Ali wants to know what made you want to be a scientist.
Lisa Stein:
So, you know, when I was younger, I always wanted to be a doctor or a lawyer, or like a scientist, you know, and I had such a strong interest in science and math from like a really, really young age.
When I was about 16, I actually decided that I want to be a medical doctor. And I didn’t get into medicine, which actually turned out to be to my benefit because I took a general science degree. And when I started studying science in university, you know, I took a one like top like subject on the human body. And I was like, I don’t know why I’m doing this. I was like, I don’t like those. I don’t enjoy it. And that’s when I realized that my true passion actually wasn’t the human body, but everything else then made the body work or made the body sick. You know, like how genetics influenced the body, or in microbiology, how the different bacteria, the different viruses, like, you know, even the fungi like, you know, like mold, how these all can have a huge impact on the human body. And yeah, that’s actually why I decided to continue my career as a scientist.
Victoria:
Cool. It’s always nice that at university to make those discoveries.
Lisa Stein:
Yeah. You know, it really was, it was probably the best decision I ever made to continue my life in microbiology.
Victoria:
(Will – What made you want to study resistant bacteria?)
Oh, that’s good. And then another question about that. Will wants to know what made you want to study resistant bacteria.
Lisa Stein:
So when I was, you know, studying my science degree, one of my subjects that I took was microbiology. And I just fell in love with it. And I fell in love with bacteria which I know it sounds hard to believe, you know. But you know, it really just made me want to investigate them and how they can affect the human body. How they could be able to become so resistant and like, you know, what creates in this way? And, you know, they may not have brains, but they’re actually just so small, the way they evolve and they adapt, like, you know, there’s nothing that they won’t like, try and overcome, almost these bacteria, you know. And I just really enjoy looking at what resistance genes they have and actually in particular, like what I do is I love to look at how they’re actually traded between each other and like, you know, how many genes one will have versus the other. And that’s like, it’s just super interesting to me.
Victoria:
(Karla – How do you protect yourself from getting infected by the bacteria that you are studying?)
Yeah. That is so interesting. Okay, this is an interesting question from Karla. How do you protect yourself from getting infected by the bacteria that you were studying?
Lisa Stein:
So this is actually a really, really important question because it can actually be very scary to think about it. Especially if you work with bacteria and you don’t really have the right tools. But, you know, as a microbiologist, I practice something what is called aseptic technique. And this actually means that we have to keep the environment as clean as possible. And this isn’t just to protect ourselves, but actually to protect our bacteria as well from becoming contaminated. So it’s kind of twofold, you know. And we actually do this to protect ourselves by wearing gloves, we wear lab coats, we always wear closed shoes to protect ourselves. I wear glasses, so I don’t have to wait goggles in the lab. You know, and we are such make sure, again, to wash our hands before and after handling anything in the lab. And we actually use chemicals like bleach water and alcohol to clean everything before we start and after we start. So you know that the bacteria cannot actually survive on any of the surfaces when we are done working.
Victoria:
(Dean – What is your favorite science discovery?)
Okay. That makes sense. This next question is from Dean. What is your favorite science discovery?
Lisa Stein:
Ooh, that’s a tough one. But it’s actually, my favorite science discovery has got to do something with what I actually currently work with. You know, what I’m studying at the moment. And what I’ve actually found is that some of these resistance genes in the bacteria can be found in more than one plasmid, or these mobile, you know, thing that like is traded between these bacteria. You know, it means that like this bacteria can actually contain like more than one of these extra DNA pieces that contain different resistance genes. And so it means it can actually trade more than one of these plasmids to get more resistance. So it doesn’t necessarily mean that it only trades one of them. It has everything. It actually uses different, you know, elements to get this resistance. And on top of that, I’ve actually found that this resistance bacterial spreading from the hospitals into the community. So, you know, the people who are leading the hospital are taking home and spreading it. And you know, this is a common thing, but I’ve also seen that some of these bacteria are actually developing by themselves in the community. So it’s, you know, it’s quite interesting, you know, like that there are some of these bacteria that are just living and thriving separate to hospital environments. So yeah, that’s been quite interesting.
Victoria:
Oh my gosh. That’s scary.
Lisa Stein:
It is. I know it makes me excited, like the research, but I also know that like in truth, like it’s a little bit scary to realize these kinds of things, you know, kind of what the outcome of these things could be. So, yeah.
Victoria:
It’s good to have people like you that are researching these things and what the outcome is.
Lisa Stein:
So now we know at least then, you know, maybe there are some kind of measures we can put in place to prevent these kinds of things from happening.
Victoria:
Yeah. That’s the first thing that we know it’s happening. And then once we know what’s happening, we can figure out how to stop it.
Lisa Stein:
Exactly. You know, that’s I guess all good research do.
Victoria:
(Sophie – Do you work with doctors a lot?)
Okay. Next question from Sophie. Do you work with doctors a lot?
Lisa Stein:
So where I study, my department, is actually made up of both scientists and doctors. So, you know, you can be like me and study a science degree, or you can be like the doctors where they study a medical degree and then they study microbiology later, but we actually do different things. So the scientists such as myself, we study how the resistance develops and contained and, you know, all the different research. But the doctors, you know, they do participate in some of the research, but they are actually able to determine what antibiotic is the correct antibiotic use to treat these bacterial infections. So they actually select the ones that are more like right to use for some infection, then, you know, maybe the others that people would want to use initially.
Victoria:
(Lorraine – What is your favorite thing to do when you are not at work?)
Okay. Cool. This is our last question, kind of a fun question from Lorraine. What is your favorite thing to do when you are not at work?
Lisa Stein:
Besides sleeping, actually one of my favorite things to do is, I love to spend time with my three dogs and you know, my husband actually, but I have three dogs two boys, Jacob and Sam, and a beautiful girl, she’s like a princess, Pippa. Wnd we actually take them out and walk them every single day. And I think that’s sometimes the best part of my day, you know? Cause dogs are fun and they’re like silly, like it gives you a chance to like kind of let go of the day and, you know, just enjoy like, you know, the air and the environment a little bit. So yeah, I think that is one of my best things to do.
Victoria:
Oh, that’s cute.
Okay. So that’s all of our questions, but do you have any questions or comments of your own for the listeners?
Lisa Stein:
I just really think that if, you know, you really want to be a scientist and you know, any of this kind of stuff interests you, you should go for it. You know, if you think you want to be a doctor and then later realize, you know, maybe medicine isn’t right for me, you know, science is always there, you know, and it’s really interesting and it’s broad and it’s different, you know, you can do so many different things. So, yeah, just would honestly say like, whatever your passion is, you should really go for it. It’s worthwhile in the end.
Victoria:
Awesome. Thank you.
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