Robert "Bob" Austin, Princeton, "Junior Mints"

Junior Mints: references a Seinfeld episode where Jerry and Kramer are watching a surgery, and Kramer flips a Junior Mint into the open wound...

Elephant in the room: evolution of a cancer to become resistant to therapy.

Statement: Evolution here is not random (!?).

Bacterial experiment to probe for accelerated and directed evolution of drug resistance: The Death Galaxy

• attempt to realize the fitness landscape dynamics in a dD ecologywith a large range of stress gradients
• Goal: evolve resistance to CIPRO (in bacteria)
• CIPRO binds to a gyrase
• bacteria evolves different forms of gyrases, and eventually one is resistant to CIPRO
• Creating a stress gradient across a population on a 1-inch slide
• Food on one side, cipro and food on other (10 ug/ml CIPRO -- high dosage)
• Resistance to 10ug/ml CIPRO in 20 hours!
• Resistant bacteria spread very quickly
• Bacterial morphology different in different parts of gradient

Point:  by the time you've detected the cancer/infection, it's already spread throughout the organism...

Further research:

1. vary initial population
2. sequence!
3. model dynamics as function of antibiotic stress

Questions from audience:

• What happens when you change the topology/connectivity of the gradient?
• Are the dynamics universal?  Do the results here apply broadly?
• Do the resistant-allowing mutations already exist in the bacteria, or do they happen during the course of the experiment?