Understanding mobility of antimicrobial resistance genes and associated mobile genetic elements in response to different antimicrobial selection press

Intracellular transposition of AMR genes between replicons (plasmids and chromosomes) and intercellular conjugation between bacterial cells accounts for the majority of clinically relevant AMR acquisition and transmission events in the Enterobacteriaceae. We have a unique opportunity to align a PhD project with recent significant funding from the JPIAMR for the STRESST project, and from UKRI for the iiCON project which will sample hospital wastewater for AMR bacteria, and which aims to characterise the inter- and intracellular movement of selected AMR genes in response to antimicrobial residues in wastewater.

This PhD project will extend this work to determine the molecular aspects of the regulatory systems which control AMR gene and associated mobile genetic element mobility and determine how these systems respond to the presence of antimicrobials in the environment. The project will incorporate micro- and molecular biology techniques, bioinformatic analysis of whole genome sequences, and the determination of rates of horizontal gene transfer and intracellular transposition which will underpin mathematical models to predict the effects of antimicrobials within clinical and environmental niches. An over arching aim of the project is to confirm the predicted no effect concentrations (PNECs) of clinically relevant antibiotics using the multi-replicon system which will represent the first time this has been done at the sub-cellular, molecular scale.