Dr Adrian Cazares
Staff Scientist
Adrian is interested in how bacteria evolve by sharing genes, and how Mobile Genetic Elements (MGEs) “jumping” and spreading genes between genomes, shape the genetic landscape and fate of bacterial populations.
The process of gene exchange between unrelated organisms, known as Horizontal Gene Transfer (HGT), is one of the most powerful forces of pathogen emergence and adaptation. Through HGT, bacteria can rapidly gain key virulence factors that define disease, and multiple genes that make them resistant to most or all antibiotics in a single step. Moreover, MGEs are ubiquitous, constantly exerting pressure on bacterial populations and fiddling with their genomes, which generates new diversity all the time. Therefore, understanding the delicate and complex interplay between MGEs, transferred genes, and the bacterial and human host, is fundamental to decipher how HGT fuels the global spread of disease and antimicrobial resistance (AMR) crisis.
Adrian’s research combines large-scale experimental and computational approaches to address how MGEs evolve and their role in pathogen adaptation, what are the drivers, barriers and dynamics of HGT across species and environments, and how we can develop strategies to prevent MGEs and AMR spread. His most recent work involved the study of historical and modern data to reveal how the main vehicles of global AMR dissemination adapted to the antibiotic era over the past 100 years. Current and future work aims to build on this and other recent studies to understand MGEs and HGT’s role in health and disease and how we can infer and predict the risk of AMR and disease spread. This include the development of new methods to track HGT and MGEs evolution at scale and in complex environments.
Adrian completed MSc and PhD degrees in Genetics and Molecular Biology in Mexico, his home country. He was then awarded to international Fellowships to continue his research in the UK, at the University of Liverpool. After a short stint there, Adrian moved to Cambride funded by an ESPOD Fellowship and a Junior Research Fellowship to work at the European Bioinformatics institute (EMBL-EBI), the Sanger Institute and the University of Cambridge (Wolfson College). He is currently a Staff Scientist at Sanger, leading projects on AMR and HGT.