AUTHOR=Maicas Sergi , Fouz Belén , Figàs-Segura Àngela , Zueco Jesús , Rico Hortensia , Navarro Alfonso , Carbó Ester , Segura-García Jaume , Biosca Elena G. TITLE=Implementation of Antibiotic Discovery by Student Crowdsourcing in the Valencian Community Through a Service Learning Strategy JOURNAL=Frontiers in Microbiology VOLUME=Volume 11 - 2020 YEAR=2020 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/microbiology/articles/10.3389/fmicb.2020.564030 DOI=10.3389/fmicb.2020.564030 ISSN=1664-302X ABSTRACT=
Antibiotic misuse is a public health problem due to the appearance of resistant strains in almost all human pathogens, making infectious diseases more difficult to treat. The search for solutions requires the development of new antimicrobials as well as novel strategies, including increasing social awareness of the problem. The Small World Initiative (SWI) and the Tiny Earth (TE) network are citizen science programs pursuing the discovery of new antibiotics from soil samples and the promotion of scientific culture. Both programs aim to bring scientific culture and microbiological research closer to pre-university students through a crowdsourcing strategy and a Service Learning (SL) educational approach, with a 2-fold objective: to encourage students to pursue careers in science and to involve them in the discovery of soil microorganisms producing new antimicrobials. SWI and TE projects were put into practice in Spain under the common name