Karishma Kaushik

Karishma Kaushik did her Ph.D. in Microbiology and Molecular Genetics in the Gordon Lab.  She went on to a position as Assistant Professor and Ramalingaswami Re-Entry Fellow in India  and in 2023 became the Executive Director of India Bioscience.

Most microbes live in heterogeneous, multi-species communities in close association with each other. Microbial consortia are dynamic, interacting communities of two or more microbial groups. Synergistic interspecies associations can provide complex functional capabilities to the consortium, far greater than that achievable with monocultures (1). Biofilms are surface-associated, structured, multi-species microbial consortia that colonize a wide range of substrates of medical importance, posing a serious clinical and public health concern (2). There is an imperative need for innovative strategies to overcome biofilm resistance. Harnessing the potential of individual cell populations and their interactions could serve as a novel therapeutic approach to combat antibiotic resistance in biofilms.

Nalin Ratnayeke, Physics undergraduate, and Karishma Kaushik, Microbiology PhD student, experimentally measured the impact of bacteria on antibiotic efficacy (here quantified as X^2) and developed an analytical model quantifying antibiotic efficacy as a function of bacterial population size (N_0).  Experimental data are black diamonds; the fitted model is the solid line.

Jake Stolhandske, Physics undergraduate, and Karishma Kaushik, Microbiology PhD student, developed a response-surface analysis to describe the variation of antibiotic efficacy in a two-dimensional phase space of pH and antibiotic concentration.

We used a combination of biological experiments and quantitative, physics-based analysis and modeling to describe how the efficacy of antibiotics is altered by changes in the environment.  Such changes in the environment can be caused by the bacterial population itself and by external manipulation.

Here are the papers we published on this:  https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsif.2015.0018  https://www.nature.com/articles/npjbiofilms20166