Description:

Title:

Catch Me If You Can... The Spread of Antibiotic Resistant Neisseria gonorrhoeae as it Relates to Biological Fitness

Speaker:

Ann E. Jerse, Ph.D., Professor, Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Uniformed Services University School of Medicine, Bethesda Maryland

Topic:

The examination of drug resistance as it relates to pathogen fitness is utilized in many fields to predict the spread of resistant bacterial, viral and parasitic infections. The rapid evolution and spread of antibiotic resistance in Neisseria gonorrhoeae may be due in part to the evolution of resistance mechanisms that confer a fitness advantage in the absence of antibiotic pressure and the role of compensatory evolution in maintaining resistance alleles that confer a fitness loss to N. gonorrhoeae. Examples of both scenarios will be presented in this seminar along with how this line of investigation has revealed new insights into gonococcal physiology. 

Host: Hank Seifert, PhD, Professor, Dept. of Microbiology-Immunology