The University of Southern Mississippi The Aquila Digital Community Honors Theses Honors College Fall 12-2012 Effect of msa on Antibiotic Resistance and Allelic Replacement of pKOR1 in Staphylococcus aureus Jordan M. Towne University of Southern Mississippi Follow this and additional works at: https://aquila.usm.edu/honors_theses Recommended Citation Towne, Jordan M., "Effect of msa on Antibiotic Resistance and Allelic Replacement of pKOR1 in Staphylococcus aureus" (2012). Honors Theses. 103. https://aquila.usm.edu/honors_theses/103 This Honors College Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Honors College at The Aquila Digital Community. It has been accepted for inclusion in Honors Theses by an authorized administrator of The Aquila Digital Community. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. The University of Southern Mississippi Effect of msa on antibiotic resistance and allelic replacement of pKOR1 in Staphylococcus aureus by Jordan Towne A Thesis Submitted to the Honors College of The University of Southern Mississippi in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Bachelor of Science in the Department of Biological Sciences December 2012 ii Approved By: ____________________________ Mohamed O. Elasri Department of Biological Sciences ____________________________ Glenmore Shearer, Chair Department of Biological Sciences ___________________________ David R. Davies, Dean Honors College iii Abstract Staphylococcus aureus is an important human pathogen that causes hospital and community-acquired infections (52). These infections are difficult to treat due to resistance to a wide range of antibiotics and spread of antibiotic-resistant strains (13, 52). S. aureus causes infection by regulation of accessory genes encoding for expression of factors contributing to virulence (9, 11, 12, 29, 34, 43, 45), including severe infection, biofilm formation, autolysis, and antibiotic resistance (4, 5, 7, 27, 56).