Combating Gram negative multi-drug resistance with insights from novel bioinformatics approaches

Antibiotic resistant (‘superbug’) infections are a major global health problem. Genetic sequencing is giving us important insights into these infections. In this PhD, I used genetic sequencing to understand how patients are colonized and develop infections with superbugs. I then used it to study two new kinds of antibiotic resistant bacteria. Finally, I focused on resistance to polymyxins, last-line superbug treatments. I used genetic sequencing to determine what kinds of polymyxin resistance there are and how they spread in hospital, as well as discovering a new kind. Finally, I used artificial intelligence to predict polymyxin resistance from bacterial genetic sequences.