Proyecto SWI (Small Word Initiative) en Españala búsqueda de microorganismos productores de nuevos antibióticos

Abstract

The need to popularize science and promote scientific culture is one of the major challenge which scientists and teachers have to face in the 21st century. In recent years, the demand of scientific vocations has strongly noted the dropout rate while the rigorous scientific culture needs to face against different pseudosciences and other misnamed “alternative medicines”. On the other hand, bacterial resistance and the hunt of new antibiotic appear as the mayor clinic problem to which human population have to approach in the next decades. In this scene born SWI. The Small World Initiative (SWI) strives to combine technology, science, and innovation to make meaningful and measurable improvements in the global education and healthcare landscape. The mission of the program is twofold: • First, it seeks to encourage students to pursue careers in science and increase scientific literacy through real-world applicable laboratory and field research in introductory courses. • Second, it aims to address a worldwide health threat –the diminishing supply of effective antibiotics– by tapping into the collective power of many student researchers concurrently tackling the same challenge, living up to its motto “crowdsourcing antibiotic discovery”. The results have been very successful for all the groups taking part and the Proyect has been well established in several Spanish Communities.