Dr. Top is currently focusing her efforts on three projects, which are explained in more detail on her website.
- The first project aims at understanding if and how the host range of drug resistance plasmids can expand, contract or shift over time.
- The second project is focused on revealing the diversity and evolutionary history of the extant pool of broad-host-range plasmids through sequence analysis.
- The third project is developing mathematical models to better understand and predict population dynamics of plasmids in spatially structured populations such as biofilms.
Understanding the principles that guide transfer and persistence of plasmids will help us predict and influence how genetic properties are moved among bacterial species in different environments. This is important because we will learn how to accelerate the spread of plasmids that carry ‘good’ genes, such as those that code for degradation of toxic pollutants, and we may be able to slow down the spread of unwanted genes, like those that cause resistance to drugs in pathogens.
For more information please visit Dr. Top's Lab site at: http://people.ibest.uidaho.edu/~etop/index.html, or visit one of the links above to open a new window to a section of Dr. Top's Lab site.
