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A Gnotobiotic Mouse Model For Studying The Effect Of Human Gut Community Ecology On A Pathobiont, Bacteroides Fragilis, Vitas Wagner

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION

A Gnotobiotic Mouse Model for Studying the Effect of Human Gut Community Ecology on a Pathobiont, Bacteroides fragilis

by

Vitas Wagner

Doctor of Philosophy in Biology and Biomedical Sciences

Evolution, Ecology, and Population Biology

Washington University in St. Louis, 2015

Professor Jeffrey I. Gordon, Chair

Childhood undernutrition represents a pressing global health challenge. Epidemiologic studies have shown that undernutrition is not due to food insecurity alone, but rather represents a complex set of interactions between intra- and intergenerational factors. The gut microbiota has been implicated as one such factor. This thesis tested the hypothesis that enteropathogen …

Β-Lactamase Gene Exchange Within The Enterobacteriaceae, Mitchell William Pesesky

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Antibiotic resistance represents a grave threat to modern medicine’s control over infectious disease. Pathogens of the Enterobacteriaceae have proven particularly problematic as they can cause a wide variety of infections, and they can be, in some cases, resistant to all antibiotics recommended for use against them. A major part of the threat posed by the Enterobacteriaceae is their ability to exchange resistance genes by horizontal gene transfer (HGT). HGT has allowed some Enterobacteriaceae to quickly accumulate resistance against diverse antibiotics, and then to spread their resistance gene collection to other pathogenic strains. I explore three aspects of how HGT has …