Sean Booth | Bacterial Ecophysiology Lab

** I am currently recruiting Undergraduate Researchers and Graduate Students (MSc and PhD) **

Dr. Sean Booth
Assistant Professor
Department of Microbiology
University of Manitoba

My research is focused on antagonistic interactions between bacteria. Bacteria live in surface-attached communities called biofilms which consist of many different species that compete for limited space and nutrients. Bacteria have also evolved a wide variety of molecular systems to directly attack competitors – weapons. These weapons include small-molecule antibiotics, and cytotoxic proteins delivered through diffusion or directly into competitors’ cells. I am interested in understanding the evolution, ecology, and physiology of bacterial weapons. Why have bacteria evolved so many different weapons? How do the ecological conditions within biofilms influence, and get influenced by, weapon-mediated competition? What determines the effectiveness of various weapons? I am exploring these questions using a combination of mathematical modelling, bioinformatic sequence analysis, and wet-lab experimentation. This approach has revealed why bacteria produce both short- and long-range weapons, and that bacterial motility enhances short-range weapons. Bacteria also crawl towards deadly concentrations of antibiotics, then burst to release their own weapons in a seeming misguided counterattack.