Speaker
Description
The growing prevalence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria poses a major global health challenge. Pseudomonas aeruginosa, identified by the WHO as a critical antibiotic-resistant pathogen, highlights the need for alternative therapies. Because iron is essential for bacterial survival and is often acquired through siderophores, disrupting iron uptake, particularly through interactions with competing microbial species, offers a promising therapeutic strategy.
Previous studies on iron chelation dynamics and cross-feeding have shown that siderophores production and cross-feeding interactions provide a growth advantage to bacteria capable of engaging in these processes. This has been demonstrated in experimental studies under well-mixed chemostat conditions. However, these studies neglect spatial heterogeneity, even though bacterial populations in natural environments typically live in spatially structured communities.
In this study, we extend an ordinary differential equation model of iron chelation and cross-feeding, we formulate a reaction-diffusion model for two bacteria strains in a two-dimensional space. The resulting nonlinear partial differential equations are solved numerically using a semi-implicit finite difference method. The model properties were analyzed, and our results show that siderophores production and cross-feeding provide a significant growth advantage even in spatially structured environments, suggesting potential strategies to address antibiotic resistance.
