Fitness effects of antibiotic resistance mutations
Antibiotic resistance is a major global problem that increasingly undermines our ability to fight bacterial infections.
The spread of resistance is essentially an evolutionary process: genes conferring resistance arise in bacteria by mutation or through horizontal gene transfer, and these genes then spread through natural selection.
This project aims to gain a better understanding of the distribution of fitness effects of drug resistance mutations, a major determinant in the speed at which resistance spreads and declines once drug use is ceased.
Supervisor: Dr Jan Engelstaedter