Ruggero La Rosa
Senior Researcher
Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Biosustainability, Technical University of Denmark
Biography
Evolution is a central process for all forms of life. In bacteria, it controls the ability to occupy different niches and how the cell optimizes its physiology in response to the environment. However, how bacteria optimize their physiology in response to an infection, is still not fully understood. Metabolism and gene regulations, for example, allow bacteria to fine-tune their physiology to tolerate stresses and antibiotics. This has great implications for the clinic since the stage of adaptation of an infecting bacterium can determine the success of the infection and eventually the treatment’s choice. However, we are still far from understanding the relationship between evolution, metabolism and antibiotic resistance and translate this information to the clinic. These open questions are the major focus of my investigations which rely on both classical microbiology approaches and cutting hedge omics analyses such as genomics, transcriptomics and metabolomics.
