Leise Riber

University of Copenhagen
Brief Biography: 

"My main focus is on finding new strategies to limit the occurrence of plasmid-borne spread of antimicrobial resistance. The spread of antimicrobial resistance among bacterial populations is mainly due to the acquisition of resistance genes located on transferable plasmids obtained through horizontal gene transfer. New ways of reducing the spread and selection of resistance therefore include the disturbance of the dynamics of plasmid transfer and stability. Current work areas include studying molecular mechanisms involved in horizontal gene transfer and plasmid stability, as well as baseline studies of the prevalence and dissemination of resistance plasmids in complex natural environments. Recently, these studies have been supplemented with a great interest within synthetic biology, e.g. the redesign and construction of functional, broad-host range, self-replicating DNA systems, such as plasmids, derived from in silica mobilome data. Areas of expertise include various techniques within molecular microbiology and bacterial genetics. Main focus is on construction of bacterial reporter strains and cloning of conjugative plasmids using mini-mu and Tn7 based transposon systems for studies of horizontal gene transfer (HGT) and plasmid dynamics in complex environments. Additionally, HGT studies include expertise within cell counting using Flow Cytometry (FCM) as well as cell sorting for 16S sequencing using Fluorescence Activated Cell Sorting (FACS)."