CBE Seminar: Doraiswami Ramkrishna

“Modeling Transfer of Antibiotics Resistance among Bacterial Species”

Indiscriminate use of antibiotics over the years has led to the development of highly resistant strains of bacterial infection that have become an alarming source of concern as they have the capacity to transfer their drug resistance to other strains. Drug resistance is encoded in a plasmid DNA in the “donor” organisms which is transferred to “recipient” organisms through a process of conjugation initiated by “quorum sensing” signaling molecules.
The pathogen, Enterococcus faecalis, is a leading cause of hospital acquired infections. Through conjugation, plasmid-free recipients receive a plasmid (pCF10) transferred from the donor cells, and subsequently become resistant to the antibiotic. In this process, two signaling molecules, iCF10 and cCF10, regulate the generic circuit for conjugations and affect the response of both recipients and donors; iCF10 and cCF10, produced from donors and recipients respectively, play opposite roles for this plasmid transfer. The presence of iCF10 suppresses conjugation whereas cCF10 will induce and promote plasmid transfer. Whether or not successful conjugation occurs depends on the relative domination of the signaling molecules cCF10 and iCF10.
This seminar will report on our modeling effort as part of a collaborative project between the University of Minnesota and Purdue University towards developing quantitative understanding of the transfer of antibiotics resistance among bacterial species. The mathematical framework uses stochastic modeling of biological signaling with distinction between single cell behavior and its implication to a population of cells in planktonic and biofilm environments. Model simulations are shown to demonstrate how recipient cells convert to donors in varying environments in which the two species coexist with a potential for suggesting strategies for intercepting the transfer of drug resistance.

Seminar Flyer_Doraiswami Ramkrishna

Date/Time:
Date(s) - Sep 28, 2018
10:00 am - 11:00 am

Location:
Boelter Hall 3400
420 Westwood Plaza Los Angeles CA 90095