There are BSc and MSc student projects available in our group.

Interested? Feel free to send me an email (m.g.j.de.vos[at]rug.nl) for more information.

Interactions between bacteria from urinary tract infections

Urinary tract infections in elderly people are often caused by more than one pathogenic bacterial species. We have recently discovered that these bacteria that cause urinary tract infections interact with each other, they ‘help’ each other to grow, or they ‘fight’ for food resources. In addition, these interactions seem to modulate the tolerance to clinically used antibiotics.

Research question 1:

How do commensal bacteria, isolated from healthy people, interact with pathogens that cause urinary tract infections?

Research question 2:

Can bacterial interactions affect the evolutionary trajectories leading to antibiotic resistance?

Research question 3:

Does the environment change bacterial interaction networks?

Subquestion: does a host change bacterial interaction networks?

Research question 4:

Do bacterial interactions affect the spread of antibiotic resistance via horizontal gene transfer (HGT)?

Research question 5:

How do urosepsis causing pathogens differ from non-sepsis-causing uropathogens?

Research question 6:

Can chatty bacteria resolve urinary tract infections?

Computational MSc project on metabolic interactions between urinary microbes, supervised by Chrats Melkonian, Michael Seidl, Bas Dutilh (University Utrecht), more information.