Antimicrobial peptide resistance in P.aeruginosa Antimicrobial peptides are small, often cationic, molecules found in organisms at all phylogenetic levels. In mammals they are effectors of the innate immune system where they display a remarka-ble 15 selective antimicrobial activity against a wide range of microbes. The peptides are assumed to be attractive candidates for novel drug development due to their activity against bacteria, which are resistant to conventional antibiotics, and because the peptides themselves rarely induce resistance. However, many clinically relevant bacteria have mechanisms that change the properties of the microbial surface increasing the tolerance of the microbes to-wards exposure of antimicrobial peptides. The project aims to investigate how P.aeruginosa responds to the exposure to a range of anti- microbial peptides with different structural properties. The project may include the following: 1) Susceptibility testing of P.aeruginosa to a range of antimicrobial peptides using standard medi-cal microbiology techniques including clinical strains and strains with mutations in known resistan-ce genes. 2) Investigate how peptides with different structure induce LPS modification genes and CAMP tolerance using fluorescent reporters and FACS analysis. 3) Investigate the molecular mechanisms underlying the induction of antimicrobial peptide toleran-ce in P.aeruginosa using fluorescent reporters and peptides with different structure. 4) Investigate the frequency and mechanism of resistance in P.aeruginosa towards novel antimi-crobial peptides and synthetic antimicrobial peptidomimetics. Contact lector Anders Folkesson, afol@vet.dtu.dk, DTU Vet, Bülowsvej 27, 1870 Frederiksberg C
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