Three Minute Thesis Competition 2019

Joining 3 Minute Thesis (2019) competition at UM was indeed a fun experience. At first, I was quite nervous about skimming up my PhD research into just 3 minutes. Then, as I began to prepare for my participation in the competition, I braced myself for the challenge. It turned out to be an excellent experience in shaping myself to be a better science communicator as the main purpose of this competition was to explain my research findings to a non-specialist audience.

So, here you go, my prepared speech for the competition……

 

Have you ever been treated for a fever and the doctor does not prescribe you antibiotics? It happened to me long ago and when I questioned the doctor, he said “taking antibiotics when you don’t need them can cause antibiotic resistance”. That sparked my interest and a quick search through slow Internet Explorer of those days, I found that antibiotic resistance does not mean that our body is fighting the antibiotics, but it is the bacteria that is going against the antibiotics.

Millions of people are suffering from this problem everyday and World Health Organization has estimated that 10 million deaths can occur by year 2050 if this continues. Surprisingly, that’s even higher than what’s predicted for cancer. 

But wait, I am sure that some of you are wondering, how can this tiny, unseen organism can cause so much of problems to the humans, right? Well, the overuse and misuse of antibiotics in people and animals have caused the germs to become smarter through genetic changes, therefore harder to kill just as I have shown in Fig. 1(a).

Figure 1. A schematic diagram explaining my thesis findings for a non-specialist audience. 

    

    Did you know, that the discovery and the approval of a new antibiotic takes anywhere between 10 to 20 years? Do the terminally ill patients in the hospital have that much of time to wait before the germs take control of their life?

Therefore, I felt that it was really important that the use of antibiotics should be preserved for critical use only. So in my PhD, I focused on finding an agent that would restore antibiotics into its days of glory. Why? Try to imagine a world without antibiotics. Even a simple cut can be life-threatening.

So, I used graphene, a carbon-based nanomaterial that has its own bacteria killing properties. So I combined graphene and old antibiotic to gain best of both the worlds. Interestingly, I found that graphene helped to carry the antibiotics and deliver it right to the doorstep of the bacteria just like the magic carpet that I have shown in Fig. 1(b). How? Graphene causes damage to the bacteria and this in turn allows the previously unsuccessful antibiotic to gain entry into the bacteria and kill it.

Why is this so important? By using graphene, I am giving life to the old antibiotics that are not being prescribed by the doctors anymore and the chances of bacteria fighting the newer antibiotics can be drastically reduced. If you are thinking “is graphene safe?”, be rest assured that I found graphene to be not toxic in human cells. I repeat, not toxic, (at low concentrations, of course) Therefore, graphene is greatly beneficial in helping mankind to fight bacterial infections and it also saves the antibiotics.