Each year, the Microbiology Society awards a number of Research Visit Grants that enable our members to work in another laboratory anywhere in the world.
PhD student Alessandro Lazdins fom the University of Birmingham writes about his trip to Sydney earlier this year, to work on plasmids in mice.
In addition to their chromosomes, many bacteria contain plasmids – small, circular DNA molecules that typically carry advantageous genes, most notably those involved in antibiotic resistance. Plasmids are particularly problematic because they can be easily passed between different bacterial populations by a process called conjugation. This can rapidly spread antibiotic resistance genes in all sorts of environments, from sewage water to the guts of humans and animals.
As a PhD student at the Institute of Microbiology and Infection at the University of Birmingham, I have been studying whether we can eliminate these plasmids from their hosts. This would be particularly useful in clinical settings, where many infections are due to bacteria that are normally found in the guts of patients. If we could remove resistance plasmids from a patient’s gut before an infection develops, then treating that infection would become a lot easier.
The Microbiology Society’s Annual Conference 2017, which took place 3–6 April in Edinburgh, was our biggest event to date. After becoming fully booked weeks before it began, the four days saw over 1,800 delegates come through the doors and 600 posters on show – we managed to exceed our personal best that we set last year in Liverpool in 2016. Have a look at our Twitter summary of the best of this year’s Annual Conference. 
Next time you go walking in a forest during the summer months, take a look up and see if you can spot any branches missing their leaves. It might not seem obvious at first, but you’re looking at a poorly understood, although rather important, ecosystem.
