This is a past event
Microbiomes and antimicrobial resistance
Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a major threat to public health and modern healthcare. Many of the most important multi-drug resistant opportunistic pathogens (e.g. Enterococcus, Escherichia coli and Klebsiella pneumoniae) first colonise the gut of hospitalised patients before they cause infections. Due to the complex ecology of the gut microbiome these opportunistic pathogens can potentially acquire resistance genes and other genes that contribute to fitness or virulence from other members of the gut microbiome.Prof Van Schaik will present his group’s work on the gut microbiome as a reservoir of antibiotic resistance genes. He will give an overview of different methodologies, including functional metagenomics, shotgun metagenomic sequencing and high-throughput qPCRs, that can be used to study the reservoir of antibiotic resistance genes in a microbiome. He will present data on the effect of intensive antibiotic therapy in the gut microbiome of critically ill patients, which showcases the complex pathways toward selection of resistant bacteria and resistance genes upon exposure to multiple antibiotics. In addition, he will present ongoing work on the development and implementation of novel technologies to link antibiotic resistance genes to microbial hosts in complex metagenomes.
Chair Alan Walker
- Speaker
- Prof. Willem van Schaik, University of Birmingham
- Hosted by
- Rowett Institute
- Venue
- The Rowett Institute
- Contact
-
Dr Nigel Hoggard
Tel: 01224 438655
This is a technical seminar aimed at professional scientists. If you are not a University of Aberdeen staff member and would like to attend, please contact us.