Serena Mili
Pronouns: she/her
Research Mentor(s): Evan Snitkin
Research Mentor School/College/Department: Microbiology and Immunology / Medicine
Program: UROP
Session: Session 2 (10:00am – 10:50am)
Authors: Serena Mili, Grace Musai, Jennifer Goodman, Tiffany Wan, Ashley Miihlbach, Evan Snitkin
Abstract
Since the advent of antibiotics, scientists have been raising the alarm on the growing threat of antibiotic-resistant pathogens. Unfortunately, due to over-prescription, widespread use in livestock and limited availability in remote and underdeveloped regions of the world, the danger they warned of not so long ago has become a reality in today’s world. Among the medical community’s biggest concerns are antibiotic resistant hospital acquired infections, which can turn a minor procedure into an expensive fight for a patient’s survival. Our team tracks the evolution and reversal of antibiotic resistance in Klebsiella pneumoniae as it spreads between hospitals in LA county, and how mutations on specific genes may affect and even improve a strain’s susceptibility when grown against the closest wild-type or susceptible variant. After tracking growth in bacterial wells using an optical density scanner, we used the data to generate graphs to visualize and compare the growth curves. Preliminary results indicate that although antibiotic resistance usually is only beneficial to pathogens in environments with antibiotics, the removal of which will cause them to revert to susceptible, several K. pneumoniae strains display more advanced fitness than their susceptible and wild-type counterparts. This has a grim implications in humanity’s struggle against these pathogens, as resistant-type strains could become dominant in the wild and even common infections could become difficult to treat.
