Bile Acid-Derived Antibiotic via Dye Leakage Use Bacterial Membrane-Mimicking Lipid Vesicles

Overview

Antibiotics have revolutionized medicine, saving millions of lives since the initial discovery of penicillin in the 1930s. Since then, numerous antibiotics have been developed to treat a variety of bacterial infections. Bile acids are naturally occurring compounds that are found in the liver of most mammals. The purpose of this study was to explore how cationic bile acid attacks a bacterial membrane and whether its effectiveness changes with varying dosing concentration to evaluate its potential as an antimicrobial alternative to antibiotics. It was hypothesized that as the concentration of bile acid increased, the intensity of dye-leakage released from anionic lipid vesicles, which mimic bacterial membranes, would increase because the cationic compound would break down the vesicles, causing the dye to leak out. Four different concentrations of bile acid in anionic DOPC/DOPG-based lipid vesicles were placed in a fluorescence spectrometer and the leakage intensities were recorded. The leakage intensities increased with the increase of the concentration of bile acid. A one-way ANOVA with a significance level (alpha) set at 0.05 gave a p-value of <0.001. It was concluded that there is sufficient evidence to suggest that a significant difference exists in the mean leakage intensities among the four different concentrations of bile acid.

Competition history

• AJAS 2025 Category not listed

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