Microscopic Reactions & Interactions

Humans get sick, but normally we can rely on doctors to give us antibiotics to help us fight the infection. However, over the last 60 years the bacteria making us sick have gained resistance to our drugs, making them ineffective. Leafcutter ants, from the Amazon rainforest, have been using antibiotics for around 30 million years yet have no problems with resistance. What can we learn from the way the ants use their antibiotics and can we find new drugs for humans by looking in ant's nests?

With antibiotic resistant bacteria on the rise, the need for antibiotic alternatives has never been greater. Bacteriophage offer a promising area of research and a suitable alternative to conventional antibiotics. This talk will discuss what bacteriophages are, how they interact with bacteria, the potential for bacteriophage therapy and how 'Phages' could be used to reduce the global burden caused by antibiotic resistant bacteria.

Chlamydia is the most commonly diagnosed sexually transmitted disease in the UK – you may have heard of the National Chlamydia Screening Programme. But how does chlamydia get into the human cell, and how does it modify the cell during infection? This talk will cover the multiple molecular interactions that take place between chlamydia and the human host cell, and how these interactions lead to disease.