The overall goal of the BCM-CARBIRU is to explore non-antibiotic therapeutic approaches to combating antibiotic resistant bacterial pathogens that are deemed urgent and serious threats. To meet this goal, the establishment of the Microbial and Phage Cultivation (MPC) core will provide to the projects the ability to cultivate bacteria and phage in multiple formats and under different atmospheric conditions. The core will also provide sequencing support of newly identified bacteria and phage that emerge from each of the three projects. The MPC organized around three primary objectives. Objective 1. Cultivation of complex microbial communities and individual microbes. Objective 2. Isolation and optimization of bacteriophage for AMR pathogens. Objective 3. Sequencing of individual microbes, phage and complex microbial communities. Centralization of these objectives into the MPC core will reduce costs by allowing all of the projects access to the infrastructure (such as anaerobic and microoxic chambers), bulk purchasing of reagents, and the reduction in labor costs by having dedicated technicians to assist in generation of bacteria and phage. The MPC will facilitate the transfer of expertise in microbial and phage cultivation from the core to trainees from all three projects. Finally, a centralized resource for sequencing of bacteria and phage will allow more coordination between the projects in regard to genomic analysis and data integration. The MPC will be an essential part of the BCM-CARBIRU that, along with the Organoid Cultivation Core, will help achieve the overall goals proposed.
