Bacterial competition in colonic crypts

With the rise in antibiotic resistance novel approaches to tackle bacterial infections are needed. The microbial communities living in our gut give protection against pathogens by preventing them from colonising the gastrointestinal tract. Harnessing the power of these communities may provide a viable alternative to combat enteric pathogens. A key trait determining whether a bacterial species can invade a community is their possession and use of potent antimicrobial weapons to kill competitors. These weapons are known to both inhibit pathogens from invading when possessed by resident bacteria, but also to enable pathogens such as Salmonella Typhimurium to invade. Studying the use of these weapons is therefore important for understanding microbial communities and associated diseases. I will use a combination of theory and experiments to better understand bacterial weapons and the associated goal of assembling communities that are resistant to pathogen invasion. My project has three main goals: 1) I will ask how bacteria use weapons to invade communities, using computational modelling and experiments to find optimal invasion strategies. 2)
I will ask how bacterial communities resist invasion by looking at whole communities both experimentally and through ecological network models. 3) Finally, I will ask how this colonisation resistance changes over time by evolving communities and pathogens together.

BBSRC priority area:
Combatting antimicrobial resistance: The alarming rise in antibiotic resistance is threatening a return of pre-antibiotic medicine. The development novel strategies to combat bacterial infections are therefore needed.