Speaker
Description
The global rise in antimicrobial resistance levels, coupled with the downturn in discovery of new antibiotics, has resulted in an urgent need for novel ways to tackle bacterial infections. Most antibiotics work by accumulating inside bacterial cells, but bacteria have evolved mechanisms to prevent prolonged intracellular exposure to toxic substances including by limiting the permeability of their membrane (to prevent substances entering the cell) and activating efflux pumps (to secrete substances outside of the cell). Understanding how these processes are regulated under different conditions presents a route for us to manipulate them for therapeutic gain. We will present a variety of mathematical modelling approaches, integrated with experimental data where possible, to investigate the dynamics of toxic substance accumulation in bacteria cells. This computational framework enables the generation of experimentally-testable predictions on the optimisation of accumulation.
