Antibiotic Resistance
The cell biology of antibiotic resistance
E. coli cells carrying the plasmid pJHCMW1 that codes for multiple genes of antibiotic resistance. The plasmid is shown in green (labelled by tetO array/TetR-Ypet system) and the chromosome is shown in red.
In collaboration with the group of Marcelo Tolmasky at CSU Fullerton, we are studying how antibiotic resistance is established in the bacterial cell. In recent published work we determined the distribution of a multi-resistance plasmid in cells, showing that plasmids preferentially localize at the edges of the cell, where there is a low density of chromosomal DNA (Reyes-Lamothe et al, 2014). We are currently using fluorescence microscopy to measure the activity of the antibiotic resistance enzymes in live cells. We aim to establish enzymatic kinetics in vivo and determine the cellular factors that influences it.