Understanding the Impact of Environmental Structure and Sub-inhibitory Antibiotic Concentrations on the Emergence of Resistance

这门课程将对抗生素积累的物理原理和对抗革兰氏阴性细菌的有效性有新的理解。由于抗生素耐药性的传播，这些细菌如今对人类和动物的健康构成了严重威胁。通过发展一种涵盖生物物理学、数学和微生物学的整体方法，学生将能够确定穿过革兰氏阴性双层膜的分子流入和流出的路径。这些途径可能取决于在治疗细菌感染过程中使用的抗生素。因此，学生将调查一组常用抗生素的运输情况。该项目将开发的新知识将通过确定这些分子在革兰氏阴性细菌中积累的途径，向制药公司通报新药的开发和现有药物的再利用。因此，从长远来看，这项研究将通过降低抗生素发现管道的成本，对我们的社会和经济产生有益的影响

This studentship will develop novel understanding on the physical principle underlying antibiotic accumulation and efficacy against gram-negative bacteria. These bacteria constitute nowadays a serious threat to human and animal health due to the spread of antibiotic resistance. By developing a holistic approach encompassing biophysics, mathematics and microbiology, the student wiill be able to determine the pathways for molecular influx and efflux across the gram-negative double membrane. These pathways are likely to depend on the antibiotic employed during treatment of bacterial infection. Therefore, the student will investigate the transport of a panel of commonly employed antibiotics. The novel knowledge that will be developed in this project will inform the pharmaceutical company on the development of new drugs and on the repurposing of existing drugs by determine the pathways for the accumulation of these molecules in gram-negative bacteria. As such this research will have a beneficial impact on both our society and economy by, in the long term, permitting to lower down the cost of the antibiotic discovery pipeline