UGI Seminar: Alison Mather

Speaker:              Alison Mather, Quadram Institute Bioscience
Date & Time:       3pm , Wednesday, 24th April
Venue:                   Medawar  Watson LT

We have a greater understanding than ever before of the mechanisms and diversity of antimicrobial resistance (AMR), due to the enormous volumes of whole genome and metagenome sequence data available. However, simply knowing what AMR is present in a particular location or population is not enough to understand the potential risk it presents for health or onward transmission. Given the global connectivity of humans, animals, foods and environments, what risk does AMR in one location or population pose for another? At a finer resolution, given the high mobility potential of AMR genes, should we focus surveillance efforts on specific bacteria or the plasmids that carry AMR genes? In this talk I will describe a number of cases where a combination of (meta)genome and epidemiological data have shed insights into the relative risks and importance of AMR in different settings.