UTS Tall Poppy makes a year of it

Imagine going back in time and talking to your great-granny and explaining that a simple pill could stop you dying from an infection! She wouldn’t have believed you because the idea of this would of been too good to be true, as back in her day, infections were the leading cause of death worldwide! 

The idea that a simple pill could cure infections became a reality in the 1940s with the discovery of antibiotics.  They are now the cornerstone of modern medicine, without them chemotherapy, organ transplants, routine surgeries and even things like getting a tattoo could be deemed too risky to undertake.

Today, we are well along the path towards returning to the pre-antibiotic era of your great-granny. Antibiotics are no longer working against a huge range of bacteria and we need to act now to tackle the problem of antibiotic resistance to avoid over 10 million deaths a year by the year 2050.

This is where I come in as a microbiologist. My research at the University of Technology Sydney focuses on understanding the way in which new types of antibiotics kill bacteria and this research takes many forms. 

I use microscopes to look at how the shape and size of bacteria 
change when they encounter the antibiotics.

I look at the DNA of the bacteria and determine what sections of the DNA change after treatment with the antibiotic, and I also play about with the structure of the antibiotics themselves to see if this changes how they interact with the bacteria. 

The reason I want to understand exactly how these antibiotics work is because this will help get them approved for human use and will hopefully give us another weapon to use in our fight against the problem of antibiotic resistance. 

For me, receiving a Young Tall Poppy Award has been an honor. 

My motivations behind the science communication that I do are not to get personal recognition, but to ensure that everyone knows about the problem of antibiotic resistance, because it IS an issue that can affect anyone on the planet. And people’s attitudes and their actions around antibiotic use can also go a long way in helping to solve the problem of antibiotic resistance.