Project Code
IIAR27Ba Iqbal
Project Type
Dry lab
Research Theme
Infection, Immunity, and Antimicrobial Resistance
Project Summary Download
Summary
Plasmids are mobile pieces of DNA that can spread between bacteria. They evolve by rearranging and swapping genes, and over the past century have emerged as a major source of antimicrobial resistance (AMR). Computational breakthroughs mean we can compute evolutionary distances between plasmids using DNA similarity, but we are missing a key piece of the puzzle: genes that look different (based on DNA) can have similar functions (based on protein structure). This project aims to incorporate functional similarity into models of plasmid evolution, testing the hypothesis that different plasmids follow a consistent evolutionary ‘grammar’.
Can the project be completed part time?
Yes
Lead Supervisor
Professor Zamin Iqbal
Lead Supervisor Email
University Affiliation
University of Bath
