Understanding Biological Mechanisms to Better Predict the Evolution of Antibiotic Resistance
About the webinar
The rapid and wide-spread evolution of antibiotic resistance is threatening global health. The major approach to tackling this problem revolves around developing novel drugs and therapies effective against existing resistant strains. Less attention has been given to the evolutionary methods that can help us predict changes to develop more robust novel drugs with longer effectiveness than existing drugs.
In this webinar, Dr. Mato Lagator will present different approaches his research group is applying to study evolutionary processes that underpin the emergence of resistance. With special focus on how these methods can be utilized to improve drug development and longevity, gain insight into how Dr. Lagator’s work is helping to make the evolutionary process more predictable by enabling de novo predictions of mutational effects. The aim is to allow more direct accounting for evolutionary factors impacting resistance when developing novel drugs and treatments.
What you'll learn about
- An example of the evolution of gene regulation
- Using biophysics to predict evolution
- Predicting mutational effects and bacterial promotor function
About the Presenters
Mato Lagator, Ph.D.
Wellcome Trust, Royal Society Sir Henry Dale Fellow, University of Manchester
Dr. Mato Lagator carried out his undergraduate work at Harvard University and his Ph.D. at the University of Warwick, where he studied the evolution of resistance in Chlamydomonas reinhardtii.
In 2013, Dr. Lagator started his postdoc at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA) with Calin Guet and Jon Bollback, slowly defining his major research interest – the relationship between molecular biology and evolution.
Dr. Lagator joined Manchester University to start his own research group as a Presidential Fellow and has since transitioned onto a Wellcome Trust, Royal Society Sir Henry Dale Fellowship. His research group, currently consisting of two postdocs and four Ph.D. students, studies various aspects of gene regulatory evolution and antimicrobial resistance.