Research Projects

Microbe population sizes can fluctuate significantly in natural habitats, such as seafloor ecology and gut microbiota, impacting eco-evolutionary dynamics. Demographic stochasticity, arising from probabilistic birth and death processes, is a crucial factor affecting population extinction in microbial ecology. In clinical contexts, population fluctuations play a key role in the heterogeneous response of bacteria against antibiotics, which can determine the proliferation or eradication of emerging antibiotic-resistant strains. The type VI secretion system (T6SS) of Campylobacter jejuni, a common gut pathogen, modulates the prey-predator relationship by injecting toxic effectors into neighboring cells. Two broad research directions are proposed: 1) to investigate the heterogeneous activity of T6SS and its impact on population fluctuation and extinction risk, and 2) to investigate how cell-to-cell variability of resistance plasmid copies impacts population fluctuation and the evolution of plasmid-mediated antibiotic resistance. The research will follow an interdisciplinary approach, including in vitro experiments, data analysis, mathematical modeling, and computer simulations. Understanding the emergence of population-level fluctuations and its connection to subcellular heterogeneity could help control the stochastic clearance of pathogens or resistant strains by regulating stress factors.