Assistant Researcher
West China Hospital, China
I am an infectious diseases physician and also a postdoctoral researcher at West China Hospital, Sichuan University, Chengdu, China. Our group, led by Dr. Zong, has been focused on the issue of antibiotic resistance, especially the Colistin Resistance and carbapenem Resistance. Within the research experience, I mastered the basic knowledge of infectious diseases and related research hotspots, and fortunately, there have been some interesting discoveries. Firstly, in March 2019, I recognized two novel Enterobacter species and one novel kosakonia species based on the whole genome analyses. Secondly, as the first author, I describe a novel mcr gene, mcr-10, on an IncFIA plasmid of an Enterobacter roggenkampii clinical strain. Thirdly, in my project of antibiotic heteroresistance (HR), About 30% of 109 Enterobacter strains from patients’ blood in West China Hospital can be classified as HR to colistin according to the definition reported previously. We identified novel base alterations in the two-component system gene phoP or phoQ as the mechanism for colistin resistance. We detected the presence of such colistin-resistance-mediated base alterations in minor subpopulations of the same strain, which generates base heterozygosity resulting in heterogeneity of colistin resistance.