Job description

• PhD Candidate in Pål Jarle Johnsens group Microbial Pharmacology and Popyulation Biology (MicroPop)
• Lecturer at the department of pharmacy
• Biomedical Laboratory Scientist with specialisation in bioinformatics and microbiology
• Temporary Scientific Employee Representative at The University Board

 

PhD working title: Disclosing the Biofilmome of human pathogenic Escherichia coli.

 

MicroPop group focus on two main topics: 

1. Evolution, selection, and spread of antibiotic resistance: It is clear that the frequency of antimicrobial drug resistance in the community is associated with the total level of antimicrobial consumption. Not so clear is the association between reduced consumption levels and subsequent reduction in the frequency of resistance. We focus on different processes that may counteract the reversal of antimicrobial resistance in drug free environments such as the biological cost of resistance, horizontal gene transfer, and genetic stability of resistance determinants. We are currently expanding our activities to include approaches for optimized antimicrobial treatment informed by principles of evolutionary and population biology and the transmission dynamics of antimicrobial resistance genes/elements in bacterial populations.

 

2. Mechanistic and evolutionary consequences of bacterial recombination: Horizontal gene transfer (HGT) in bacteria plays a major role in adaptive evolution exemplified by the evolution, spread and selection for antibiotic resistance determinants. For two out of three described mechanisms of HGT, conjugation and transduction, gene recruitment through recombination is likely a coincidental byproduct of plasmids’ and phages’ need for continuous transmission to new hosts. The third mechanism of HGT, natural transformation, is a complex mechanism for DNA uptake that requires the concerted action of many chromosomal genes. On first consideration it appears evident that this mechanism for HGT has evolved to “sample the available sequence space” in order to increase the adaptation rates of transformable strains. However, other hypotheses exist for both the evolution and the maintenance of natural transformation in bacteria. We are currently testing a number of these hypotheses both experimentally and theoretically. We are also interested in the mechanistic basis of bacterial recombination and how it affects genetic diversity in microbes.