Question

a few days after returning home from a spring break trip, a group of students each becomes ill. they have fever, cough, headaches, and shortness of breath. after reporting to the doctor that they used the hot tub at their hotel, she suspects legionnaires disease. this disease is caused by breathing water droplets that contain legionella bacteria. to confirm which antibiotic would be the best treatment, which test would you suggest the doctor perform? blast dna sequencing disk diffusion assay elisa

Explanation:

• BLAST (Basic Local Alignment Search Tool) is mainly used for comparing nucleotide or protein sequences in a database, not for determining antibiotic treatment.
• DNA sequencing is about determining the order of nucleotides in DNA, which is not directly related to choosing the best antibiotic.
• The Disk Diffusion Assay (Kirby - Bauer test) is specifically used to determine the susceptibility of bacteria (in this case, Legionella) to different antibiotics. By placing antibiotic - impregnated disks on an agar plate with the bacteria, the zone of inhibition (where bacteria do not grow around the disk) can be measured. A larger zone of inhibition generally indicates greater susceptibility of the bacteria to that antibiotic.
• ELISA (Enzyme - Linked Immunosorbent Assay) is used for detecting and quantifying antibodies or antigens, not for antibiotic susceptibility testing.

Answer:

C. Disk Diffusion Assay