Professor Craig MacLean
Senior Research Fellow, Department of Biology; Fellow of All Souls College
About
Professor Craig MacLean is a Senior Research Fellow at All Souls College and the Department of Biology. He is an internationally recognised leader in the fields of microbiology and evolutionary biology, and he advises the UK government, NGOs and industry.
Antibiotics have made a massive contribution to human health by reducing the mortality and economic costs associated with bacterial disease. Unfortunately, antibiotic resistance in pathogenic bacteria threatens to undermine the clinical utility of antibiotics and we are currently faced with the ominous possibility of a post-antibiotic era.
Research in the MacLean lab is focused on understanding the fundamental processes that drive the spread and maintenance of resistance in pathogen populations using approaches from evolutionary biology. The lab is also interested in understanding how bacteriophages can be used to eliminate pathogenic bacteria and block the transfer of antibiotic resistance genes. Work across both of these themes involves a combination of lab experiments, clinical trials and genomic analyses.
Expertise
- Antibiotic Resistance
- Bacterial Disease
- Bacteriophage
- Evolutionary Biology
- Experimental Evolution
- Horizontal Gene Transfer
- Plasmids
Selected publications
- Regulatory fine-tuning of mcr-1 increases bacterial fitness and stabilizes antibiotic resistance in agricultural settings (2023).
- The evolution of colistin resistance increases bacterial resistance to host antimicrobial peptides and virulence (2023).
- Mixed strain pathogen populations accelerate the evolution of antibiotic resistance in patients (2023).
- Gut-to-lung translocation and antibiotic mediated selection shape the dynamics of Pseudomonas aeruginosa in an ICU patient (2022).
- Rapid evolution and host immunity drive the rise and fall of carbapenem resistance during an acute Pseudomonas aeruginosa infection (2021).
- Efflux pump activity potentiates the evolution of antibiotic resistance across S.aureus isolates (2020).
- High parasite diversity accelerates host adaptation and diversification (2018).
- Multicopy plasmids potentiate the evolution of antibiotic resistance in bacteria (2016).
Recent media work
- Do antibiotics really wipe out your gut bacteria? (BBC Future, 2023)
- Il bando dell'uso degli antibiotici negli allevamenti non è sufficiente a combattere le resistenze (Il Foglio, 2023)
- Use of antibiotics in farming ‘endangering human immune system’ (The Guardian, 2023)
- Dishing out antibiotics 'like sweets' for Strep A will fuel superbugs, experts warn (The Telegraph, 2022)
Languages
English, French