Production and Qualitative Analysis of Secondary Metabolites of Staphylococcus Bacteria having Antibiotic Activity

Antibiotics are one of the most important commercially exploited secondary metabolites produced by the bacteria and employed in a wide range. Most of the antibiotic producers used today are the soil microbes and the antibiotics are the secondary metabolites of these cells. With the increasing applications of these commercially available antibiotics they are becoming more expensive and hence it is the time to discover a more cost effective method for their production. The current work aims to use the soil bacteria in the field of antibiotic production due to their abundant availability. The work involves the isolation of the bacteria from the selected area and the production of pure cultures. As all the bacteria are not capable of antibiotic secondary metabolite production, the isolates would be subjected for the initial screening for the sensitivity to the test antibiotic ampicillin. Here ampicillin is selected as the test or reference antibiotic to which the activity of the metabolites produced is compared. Ampicillin resistant strains were selected as ampicillin is the referenced antibiotic. The antibiotic production was further confirmed by Zone of Inhibition test in comparition with the commercial ampicillin. Once the bacteria capable of antibiotic secondary metabolite production are isolated its identification is done based on Biochemical tests. Finally the antibiotic metabolites are produced which can be further purified.