Project description
Identifying the genetic drivers of adaptability
Antimicrobial drug resistance poses a global threat to both human health and healthcare systems. One key step in tackling this threat is understanding why some organisms evolve antimicrobial resistance faster, or more frequently, than others. The biology behind this ability to adapt to new environments, also referred to as ‘adaptability’, is still not understood. With the support of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions programme, the NAT-ADAPT project aims to identify the genetic basis of adaptability using the yeast model Saccharomyces cerevisiae. The project further aims to use these insights to help model adaptation dynamics and predict antimicrobial resistance. Additionally, it seeks to generate Saccharomyces cerevisiae strains that can be used as a platform to screen strategies against microbial adaptation.
Objective
The rise of antimicrobial resistance is an urgent global threat to human health and global healthcare capacities. Despite ongoing efforts to develop new antimicrobial drugs, eventual adaptation is an inevitable corollary of evolution. Long-term solutions therefore require innovative approaches, including (1) learning to predict adaptation and (2) developing platforms to screen strategies against microbial adaptation. The capacity of an organism to adapt to new environments, also described as adaptability, is a heritable trait that varies substantially between even closely related lineages. Dissecting the genetic basis and mechanisms driving variation in adaptability is the critical first step in achieving these long-term objectives.
As an MCSA fellow, Dr Xanita Saayman will receive training from Dr Gianni Liti at the Institute for Research in Cancer and Ageing (IRCAN) and from Dr Jonas Warringer during a secondment to the University of Gothenburg. Throughout NAT-ADAPT, Dr Saayman will exploit an extensive collection of Saccharomyces cerevisiae isolates with unprecedented scales of phenotypic and genotypic diversity. Bridging interdisciplinary fields (e.g. population genetics, phenomics, genomics, genome engineering), NAT-ADAPT will identify and characterise genetic drivers of adaptability, harnessing this knowledge for two applications. First, NAT-ADAPT will model adaptation dynamics based on quantifiable genome properties, serving as an invaluable resource for predicting the emergence of antimicrobial resistance. Second, NAT-ADAPT will produce ‘hyper-evolver’ Saccharomyces cerevisiae strains. Such strains can serve as critical platforms with which to screen strategies against microbial adaptation, improving the efficacy of current antimicrobial solutions.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
- natural sciencesbiological sciencesevolutionary biology
- natural sciencesbiological sciencesgeneticsgenomes
- medical and health sciencesbasic medicinepharmacology and pharmacydrug resistanceantibiotic resistance
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Programme(s)
- HORIZON.1.2 - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) Main Programme
Funding Scheme
HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF - HORIZON TMA MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships - European FellowshipsCoordinator
75794 Paris
France