David A Walsh Arts & Sciences Seminar this Friday, Feb 16, at noon in Snell 212

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Clarkson University Spring 2024 David A. Walsh‘67 Arts & Sciences Seminar Series Friday, February 16th at 12pm in SN 212 The Effects of Spatial Structure on the Evolution of Antibiotic Resistance Antibiotic resistance is identified by the World Health Organization as one of the top 10 global public health threats for human civilization. When exposed to antibiotics, bacteria may evolve resistance by means of natural selection. However, in a complex natural environment, bacteria are also exposed to a range of other challenges that may constrain evolutionary outcomes. Spatial structure in the environment is one such challenge. In a highly structured environment, local interactions and small-scale variations can have important impacts on bacteria evolution and, in particular, antibiotic resistance. In this seminar, I will discuss lab experiments done with the bacterium Pseudomonas aeruginosa, exploring how these populations evolve in response to the antibiotic Ciprofloxacin. I tracked the phenotypic and genomic changes as these bacteria evolved over 200 generations in the lab, manipulating the viscosity of the environment by adjusting agar concentration. This research underlines the importance of considering spatial structure in our understanding of evolutionary dynamics in general, and some of the specific impacts on the evolution of antibiotic resistance. Mahfuza Akter earned her PhD from the Department of Biology at Clarkson University in 2023, under the supervision of Dr. Susan Bailey. She is currently working as postdoctoral research associate in the Bailey lab. In 2023, Akter was awarded an American Society of Microbiology (ASM) Future Leaders Mentoring Fellowship. Her research interests include pathogens, evolution, and antibiotic resistance and her current research focused on understanding evolution in spatially heterogeneous environments using experimental evolution with microbes. The Arts & Sciences Seminar Series is a weekly colloquium series that has been supported by the School of Arts & Sciences Advisory Council at Clarkson University especially through generous gifts from David A. Walsh ‘67. Please contact ansseminar@clarkson.edu SA&S 300: Arts and Sciences Seminar is a one credit course intended to foster an interdisciplinary outlook in undergraduates majoring in the School of Arts and Sciences.

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