Tracking bacteria evolution

Figuring out how unfriendly bacteria prepare themselves and future generations for life outside the friendly environment of their hosts could have a direct impact on public health.

“It’s a question of life and death,” says Dorte Dopfer, a UW–Madison veterinary epidemiologist and specialist in the food-borne bugaboo Escherichia coli O157:H7. “Ten of those bacteria can kill a person, especially young children and the elderly.”

Dopfer and UW–Madison bacteriologist Charles Kaspar will study the evolutionary ecology of infectious pathogens by separating their life and reproduction cycles inside and outside hosts and examining the trade-offs an organism may have to make to increase its chances of survival in one environment or the other.

Teamed with Texas A&M University epidemiologist and computer modeler Renata Ivanek-Miojevic, the researchers will take an interdisciplinary tack with a $1 million National Science Foundation grant that provides for the addition of cutting-edge DNA analysis equipment to Dopfer’s lab.