Using systems microbiology to combat infectious disease

In this talk, will present how we can use bacterial libraries to systematically dissect complex processes such as antimicrobial resistance, or the bacterial cell envelope biogenesis. I will first explain the basic concepts behind the chemical genomics and the phenotyping approaches we routinely employ in the lab, to showcase how those methods can help answer specific research questions.

Then, I will present what we learned from profiling two P. aeruginosa single-gene deletion libraries (in the clinically relevant strains, PA01 and PA14) in over 200 chemical and environmental stresses. I will discuss how we currently expand this platform to other single deletion libraries of bacterial pathogens (K. pneumoniae, Vibrio cholerae, Mycobacterium bovis BCG, etc.), and libraries of sequenced clinical isolates. Finally, I will showcase our most recent work where we used a pooled systems approach (TraDIS) to learn more about the BAM complex, a protein complex that is essential to uphold envelope integrity in Gram-negative bacteria.