Speaker
Description
Horizontal gene transfer mediated by bacteriophages is a critical mechanism for bacterial genome plasticity, among others, responsible for the diffusion of antibiotic resistance. We develop a stochastic Chemical Reaction Network (CRN) model capturing phage-mediated infection in E. coli populations, where M13 bacteriophages transport genetic sequences, including antibiotic resistance genes. Our model integrates several scales: cell growth kinetics, infection dynamics, and population-level interactions under antibiotic selection. Its main features are modeling of infection phases, growth-burden-associated phage production, and the impact of antibiotic selection. The stochastic CRN considers individual cell variability and rare infectious events, which are essential when phage concentrations are low. This model allows to quantitatively describe resistance transfer efficiency under different conditions such as phage proportions and antibiotic selection.
Bibliography
@article{c,
title={Phage-mediated intercellular CRISPRi for biocomputation in bacterial consortia},
author={Pujar, Abhinav and Pathania, Amit and Hopper, Corbin and Pandi, Amir and Calder{\'o}n, Cristian Ruiz and F{\"u}gger, Matthias and Nowak, Thomas and Kushwaha, Manish},
journal={Nucleic Acids Research},
volume={53},
number={3},
pages={gkae1256},
year={2025},
publisher={Oxford University Press}
}
@article{d,
title={An M13 phagemid toolbox for engineering tuneable DNA communication in bacterial consortia},
author={Pujar, Abhinav and Sharma, Anchita and Jbara, Hadi and Kushwaha, Manish},
journal={bioRxiv},
pages={2025--06},
year={2025},
publisher={Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory}
}
@article{e,
title={Distributed computation with continual population growth},
author={Cho, Da-Jung and F{\"u}gger, Matthias and Hopper, Corbin and Kushwaha, Manish and Nowak, Thomas and Soubeyran, Quentin},
journal={Distributed Computing},
volume={35},
number={6},
pages={547--569},
year={2022},
publisher={Springer}
}
