Peijun Ma Lab

With the knowledge that resistant and persistent clones typically arise from single-cell events, breaking away from a homogenous view of bacteria populations and investigating the mechanisms behind their heterogeneity will help us understand how resistance and persistence can be mitigated. To do this, we will apply innovative bacterial single-cell transcriptomics to characterize bacterial drug-induced heterogeneity at the single-cell level.

Part of understanding how best to mitigate resistance and persistence is to understand how bacteria behaves in the host microenvironment. 

To achieve this, we characterize the microbiome using bacterial single-cell transcriptomics to understand the evolution of resistance and persistence in the context of the host microenvironment, particularly in patients with recurrent bacterial infections.

Our work will provide novel insight into bacterial heterogeneity and identify therapeutic targets to treat bacterial infections associated with antibiotic resistance and persistence. By contributing research that helps characterize the heterogeneity of bacterial populations and examining the origins of resistance and persistence at the single-cell level, we hope to advance that will allow successful treatment for pediatric catastrophic disease.