Deciphering the impact of phages and pathogenicity islands in the emergence of antibiotic resistant bacteria.

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

Bacteria account for around half of the cells of an average human body and are key determinants of health and disease. How do they evolve? How do multi-resistant and virulent bacterial clones emerge? Bacteria evolve extremely fast in response to environmental challenges, like phage predation or antibiotic therapy, because they mutate and incorporate genes from other bacteria. Horizontal gene transfer (HGT) can, in a single step, transform a benign bacterium into a virulent or drug-resistant pathogen. Bacteriophages, a type of virus that infects bacteria, are important contributors to the diversification of the bacterial genome, either by integrating into the chromosome as prophages or by driving HGT through a process known as genetic transduction. Not only phages but also a new family of pathogenicity islands, the phage-inducible chromosomal islands or PICIs, engage in transduction. This work will investigate the hypothesis that many antibiotic resistance genes, carried in plasmids, are transferred in nature using either phage- or PICI-mediated transduction. We anticipate that using this mechanism, bacteriophages and PICIs must be considered as two of the most important players contributing to the emergence of multi-resistance in clinical strains. This programme will make significant contributions to science, from addressing the molecular basis of fundamental biological processes to understanding the evolution of virulence and the spread of antibiotic resistance in nature.