Blanquart Lab

Research focus

ERC Starting Grant · 2020

The evolutionary epidemiology of commensal bacteria: the case of Escherichia coli from 1980 to 2025

Understanding the rapid adaptation of infectious pathogens is crucial to design better management policies and anticipate future changes. Yet, existing models often fail to explain these dynamics. I will address this major challenge of evolutionary biology in the bacterial species Escherichia coli. E. coli is a commensal of the human gut and an opportunistic pathogen causing infections responsible for more than a million deaths worldwide per year. E. coli has rapidly evolved over the last four decades. From the 1980s, starting from an almost fully sensitive population, multiple antibiotic resistances have emerged and stabilised at an intermediate frequency. Concomitantly, virulence, the…

From the public funding record at EU CORDIS. Describes the funded project, not the reviews below.