Advances in Immunology and Microbiology Seminar Series: Dr. Prabhat Talukdar

About the event

The Advances in Immunology & Microbiology seminar series is a weekly forum that brings together scientists from diverse fields and disciplines across the College of Veterinary Medicine to discuss research advances in the broad areas of immunology, microbiology, infectious diseases, and global health. Seminars feature student speakers from the Immunology & Infectious Disease (IID) doctoral program, IID-affiliated postdoctoral researchers and faculty, intramural speakers from across the university, and extramural speakers.

PRESENTER: Dr. Prabhat Talukdar, postdoc

TITLE: Antibiotic-resistant Enterobacteriaceae: Arsenic-mediated co-resistance and strain-Level dominance in fecal microbiota

Abstract: Natural contaminants such as heavy metals can increase antibiotic resistance in bacteria. In our lab, we focus on the impact of environmental pollutants such as arsenic on antibiotic resistance in the Escherichia coli. In a population-based study, we found a significantly higher number of children in rural Bangladesh exposed to high levels of arsenic were colonized with antibiotic-resistant E. coli than children with low or no exposure to arsenic. In this seminar, I will present the experimental data with E. coli isolates obtained from these children on the effects of arsenic on bacterial growth, antibiotic resistance, plasmid transfer, and expression of antibiotic and arsenic resistance genes. In addition, I will present findings from my other project which explored the strain-level variations of extended-spectrum β-lactamase-producing E. coli (ESBL-Ec) and carbapenem-resistant E. coli (CR-Ec) in the stool of healthy children. The outstanding question is whether there is any difference in the predominance of certain strains of a bacterial species in gut colonization and if yes, which factors make these strains dominant in a mixed population such as human gut microbiota.