Bacterial Transformation and Competition Under Antibiotic Stress

Transformation, the process by which bacteria uptake DNA directly from their environment and incorporate it as their own genetic material, is a form of Horizontal Gene Transfer that occurs throughout nature as an important mechanism for spurring on bacterial evolution. We examine the capacity of bacteria to undergo transformation and will discuss work that has been done by the Austin group using Micro-Habitat Patches (MHPs) to examine the emergence of phenotypes due to horizontal gene transfer.