Inspirational AVS students have eight projects in BT Young Scientists final

STUDENT: Ciara Cannon 

CATEGORY: Intermediate Biological and Ecological 

PROJECT TITLE: An investigation into the optimum antimicrobial activity of nanoparticles.

APPROACH: My brother is completing a PhD and currently he is researching silicon nanoparticles and their applications in point of care testing. We discuss this a lot and his research has led me to also be interested in nanoscience. For my project, I will test various sizes and types of nanoparticles on four different types of bacteria to see if there is an optimum size and type of nano particle in terms of antimicrobial activity on each of the four types of bacteria. I have carried out a lot of research on Google scholar and have found many studies detailing the antimicrobial activity of nanoparticles and in particular the antimicrobial activity of silver nanoparticles. I am interested to see if it really is the best in terms of antimicrobial activity so this is why I would like to investigate a range of metals. Firstly I will grow my bacterial cultures from slope agars on blood agar and then I will create lawn plates of bacteria on nutrient agar. I will make wells in the agar and I will add the various sizes of each of my test nanomaterials to the wells again using an aseptic technique. To measure efficacy, I will measure the cleared area around my test nano materials to establish the anti microbial value of each test material and optimum size of nanoparticle. Once I have collected my nanoparticle antimicrobial results, I will then compare the antimicrobial activity of each test material using cleared area and I will use ‘t tests’ to see if differences in the mean cleared areas of each test material are significant.