UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCHER

Department of Biochemistry & Cell Biology

6100 Main Street

Houston, TX 77005

Under the guidance of Dr. Troy Hammerstrom, a postdoctoral research scientist working with Professor Shamoo, I plan to look into the multi-drug resistant bacterium, Acinetobacter baumannii.

The clinical significance of A. baumannii has grown rapidly in the last decade due to its ability to upregulate or acquire resistance determinants, making it one of the organisms threatening the current antibiotic era.”  Using clinical strains of A. baumannii, Dr. Hammerstrom is attempting to determine how the bacterium becomes resistant to commonly used antibiotics.

To aid this project, I focus on a particular gene which is in charge of creating efflux pumps. When antibiotics enter the bacteria, it is thought that the adeR gene promotes the adeA gene to create efflux pumps. These efflux pumps transport the antibiotics out of the bacteria thus making A.  baumannii drug resistant. We hope to gain a better understanding of the circumstances in which this occurs by looking at the activity of the gene adeR in the common laboratory bacterium Escherichia coli.

To achieve this goal we will be using a technique called Circular Polymerase Extension Cloning, a procedure using the Polymerase Chain Reaction. We will clone the adeR gene into a plasmid with an inducible promoter and then clone the promoter of adeA into a different plasmid with a reporter gene GFP. The reporter will tell us when the adeR gene induces the promoter of adeA to act.

The results of this study have significance for the future health care community especially in antibiotic development. It could lead to the creation of another therapeutic which represses the creation of efflux pumps. This would work hand in hand with the antibiotic thus preventing the bacteria from becoming resistant.