Widespread antibiotic resistance is outpacing the discovery of new antibiotics, creating a public health emergency. Since the golden age of antibiotics discovery of the mid-20th century, the discovery and clinical development of new antibiotics have relied heavily upon the screening of bioactive secondary metabolites produced by soil microorganisms. However, these discovery efforts focused predominantly on screening of metabolites from culturable soil bacteria which represent a minor component of the total environmental microbial diversity. Overreliance on this limited pool of biological and chemical diversity has resulted in a sharp decrease in the number of new antimicrobial natural products being discovered and prompted new methods for investigating the underexplored natural product chemical space possessed by previously uncultured soil microorganisms.

In this scientific poster, we report the use of the Isolation Chip (iChip) cultivation method for the discovery of a putatively novel environmental Streptomyces strain possessing potentially novel antimicrobial metabolites with strong inhibitory activity against multidrug-resistant strains of Staphylococcus spp.

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To cite this poster: Alverson, D., Koch, A., Maxey, K. et al. Exploring Microbial Dark Matter: Isolation of a Novel Streptomyces Strain Exhibiting Potent Antibacterial Activity Against Multidrug-Resistant Staphylococcus Species. Poster presented at: 2026 ASP Annual Meeting; July 26 - 29, 2026; Denver, CO.