Team:REC-CHENNAI/Measurement
Measurement
As part of our characterization studies, we were required to carry out Antimicrobial Efficacy tests for Latarcin (wild-type and mutant), an antimicrobial peptide. Conventionally, to determine the inhibition concentration and the time point of inhibition two different experiments namely, Minimum Inhibition Concentration (MIC) assay and time-kill test are conducted. MIC assay gives the minimum concentration at which the test agent shows activity fixing time as constant. Time kill test helps in determining the minimum time required for the activity to be expressed for the corresponding MIC value. In order to simplify the procedure further, we coupled the two experiments. The test samples at different concentrations were incubated with the test organism and the activity was measured at regular time interval. By following this experimental design, one can determine the activity of the antimicrobial agent at varied time points for all different concentrations concurrently, thus minimizing the time and materials required for two different assays.