The role of bacterial immune systems in the spread of antimicrobial resistance. (Ref: 3970)

Antimicrobial resistance is one of the greatest threats to human health of our time causing a predicted 10 million
deaths per year by 2050 with a total cost of $100 trillion by the same date.
Novel resistance mechanisms regularly emerge in clinical pathogens, which threatens to make even our antibiotics of
last resort ineffective. It has been postulated that we are entering a post-antibiotic era where even simple infections
might be fatal, and routine medical procedures that depend of antibiotic prophylaxis will be impossible.
Antimicrobial resistance mechanisms are often carried on plasmids, which are mobile DNA elements that can spread
by horizontal gene transfer between bacteria, leading to rapid spread of resistance between species. Understanding
how these plasmids spread is critical to future efforts to manage the dissemination of antimicrobial resistance.
This project will explore to what extent bacterial immune systems can limit the spread of antimicrobial resistance to
gut bacteria. It is well documented that bacteria can have many different types of immune systems, with clear variation
in the number and types of systems between bacteria, but how these systems shape the spread of antimicrobial
resistance remains unclear