25 minutes on… Plagues: Lecture Five - 'Evolutionary Drivers of Antibiotic Resistance'

Craig MacLean is Professor of Evolution and Microbiology and a Senior Research Fellow of All Souls College. His research investigates the ecology and evolution of infectious disease using a combination of experimental and computational approaches.  

In the mid 20th century, antibiotics were seen as miracle drugs that would eliminate the burden of bacterial disease. The evolution of antibiotic resistance in pathogenic bacteria is rapidly eroding the utility of antibiotics, with some models predicting that resistant infections will become the leading cause of death by the mid 21st century. This talk will focus on how ecological and evolutionary approaches can help us to understand how antibiotic resistance spreads in pathogen populations, and how we can develop new interventions to overcome this problem.