Why aren't all E. coli resistant to antibiotics?

  • Event type: SEEM
  • Dates: March 28, 2025
  • Schedule: 11:30 a.m.–12:30 p.m.
  • Location: CEFE Main Hall, CEFE Building, CNRS Campus, Route de Mende, Montpellier

(Seminar in English)

Pleuni Pennings

Department of Biology, San Francisco State University, San Francisco, USA

pennings@sfsu.edu

Friday, March 28  

CEFE – Large meeting room – 11:30 a.m.

1919 Route de Mende, Montpellier 

The seminar will also be streamed live online.

Link to seminar:https://umontpellier-fr.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_zgLs6hEhTxSlPV2sPbMsRQ

Access to campus (register before 11 a.m. on SEEM day):https://duo.dr13.cnrs.fr/public/evenement/index

Abstract

We don't know why drug-resistant strains and susceptible strains often coexist and what determines the level of resistance in a pathogen population (e.g.,E. coli,S. pneumonia, HIV). However, there is a lot wedoknow: we know that resistance levels are often stable over years, we know that resistance levels depend on drug usage at the country level, and we know that resistance is often due to many independent acquisition events (whether mutational or through horizontal gene transfer). Here I present a simple population-genetic model, akin to mutation-selection balance which can explain all these observations.