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.