What the Ancestral Microbiome says about Antibiotic Resistance

Dr. Cecil Lewis Jr. is a Professor of Anthropology at The University of Oklahoma. His primary focus is the evolution of the human microbiome, but his other interests include human diversity, multiomic methods, community engagement, and ethics.

Antibiotic resistance (AR) is one of the most alarming global threats of our time due to its ever-increasing spread across bacterial species and the high morbidity and mortality associated with multidrug resistant (MDR) bacterial infections. We are now in an era of AR and in noticeable danger of a post-antibiotic age. The US Center for Disease Control estimates over 2 million cases of MDR infections per year, leading to 23,000 mortalities in the US alone.

A dominate reservoir of AR bacteria is the gut microbiome. To understand the nature and diversity of AR prior to selective pressure from industrialization, Dr. Lewis has used data from both extant peoples and the ancient human microbiome. Along the way, he has discovered novel AR mechanisms and underlined the burden of ascertainment bias in public databases that underrepresent AR diversity.

Date: May 12th, 2021: 12:00p CST

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