Aanuoluwa Adekoya

Piqued by the prevalence of chronic wounds and the isolation of antibiotic-resistant strains of Staphylococcus aureus from these infection sites in clinical settings, I have developed a keen interest in contributing to research centered around understanding mechanisms employed by S. aureus to persist in chronic wounds using a combination of classical microbiological techniques and multi-omics approaches.

Although S. aureus has been identified as a key member of chronic wounds, previous studies and data from our lab's metatranscriptomics analysis of chronic bacterial infections revealed that Gram-Positive Anaerobic Cocci (GPAC) make up about 25-30% of the anaerobic bacterial community isolated from these bacterial infections.

Despite the prevalence of GPAC and S. aureus in clinical specimens, the molecular mechanisms that allow the co-existence of these two groups in polymicrobial infections are not well defined. Hence, my research seeks the interactions between S. aureus and GPAC in chronic wounds. In contributing to this area of science, I hope to elucidate on the competitive and cooperative interactions between S. aureus and F. magna in chronic wounds and the role of spatial structure in mediating these interactions using a mouse model.

This area is of utmost interest to me as it is a field that provides in-depth knowledge about the factors that contribute to the persistence and antimicrobial drug resistance exhibited by S. aureus in chronic wounds and, more importantly, how the presence and arrangement of other co-infecting microbes impact the expression of virulence genes in S. aureus and ultimately cause delayed healing of wounds.