This course is the Johns Hopkins partnership to Tiny Earth, a unique course designed to ignite students’ interest in biology by introducing them to hands-on research integrated with learning core biology concepts. The student-driven research project provides a fun and engaging opportunity to make your own scientific discoveries in a community of peers with close contact with expert instructors. Students spend the semester: a) discovering antibiotic-producing bacteria from soil sources, b) characterizing their producers, c) extracting secondary metabolites, and d) contributing their findings to a database shared by a network of student researchers from over 300 other institutions around the globe.