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

该学生将对抗生素积累的物理原理和对革兰氏阴性菌的功效产生新的认识。由于抗生素耐药性的蔓延，这些细菌现在对人类和动物的健康构成严重威胁。通过发展包括生物物理学、数学和微生物学在内的整体方法，学生将能够确定通过革兰氏阴性双膜的分子流入和流出的途径。这些途径可能取决于治疗细菌感染时使用的抗生素。因此，学生将调查一组常用抗生素的运输情况。在这个项目中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，为制药公司提供开发新药和重新利用现有药物的信息。因此，从长远来看，这项研究将对我们的社会和经济产生有益的影响，允许降低抗生素发现管道的成本

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