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Kelsey Lau

The purpose of my project is to map out the evolutionary trajectories of resistance in E. coli to tetracycline antibiotics, focusing primarily on minocycline. Resistance to tetracyclines is coded for in the TetX gene; mutations to this gene can render bacteria even more resistant to various tetracycline drugs. As part of my project, I created mutants by periodically increasing drug dosages for E. coli over a fixed time period, resulting in the development of an adapted strain capable of conferring much greater resistance to minocycline than wild type cells. I am currently working to further characterize the cells that were grown during these flask runs to ultimately explain the origin of this observed increase in minocycline resistance. Future work involves conducting modified experiments in order to further elucidate the evolutionary pathways used in E. coli to increase resistance to antibiotics.