OUR RESEARCH
Over the last century, antibiotics have become a primary pillar of modern medicine and have strongly contributed to the increase of our life expectancy. Yet, the overuse of antibiotics combined with the rapid adaptation power of bacteria has led to the emergence of strains that resist every antibiotic available on the market, thereby threatening human health. There is an urgent need for new molecules or alternative paths to target resistant bacteria, but it is equally important to fully grasp how currently-used antibiotics affect the diverse bacterial strains in communities within the human body and how the mechanisms of antibiotic resistance development are impacted by this diversity. As we face a post-antibiotic era, our research is critical, as it will reveal novel molecular mechanisms involved in antibiotic action and resistance, which will ultimately open up ways for fine-tuning antimicrobial treatment and delaying resistance.
In the Goemans Lab, we combine systems approaches with molecular microbiology and biochemistry to understand how antibiotics affect diverse bacterial species and strains from our gut microbiota, how it impacts the composition of bacterial communities and the emergence of antibiotic resistance.