Grant: Project Grant

Access to clean drinking water is particularly important to human health - a point recently illustrated by alarmingly elevated rates of lead exposure and increased cases of Legionnaires' disease among the residents of Flint, Michigan after cost-saving measures influenced a decision to change their source of municipal water. This is unfortunately not surprising, given that a 2015 report by the US Centers for Disease Control noted of the bacterium that causes Legionnaires' disease: "Legionella is the most frequently reported etiology among drinking water outbreaks." Access to clean water is a critical concern in Canada as well: with an aging infrastructure in many of our cities and over 90 First Nation communities under persistent boil water advisories due to poor water quality, we must do all that we can to both improve infrastructure and generate knowledge on how waterborne pathogens are able to thrive within the undertreated water systems with which we continue to make do. Environmental surveys and laboratory models rarely capture the complexity encountered by pathogens in dynamic real world environments such as municipal water systems, making it difficult to assess risk and develop strategies to mitigate it. Over the past several years, my lab has developed an expertise in microbial genomics and bacterial genetics that places us in a strong position to advance our understanding of the microbial interactions that modulate the colonization of our water systems by this common agent of waterborne disease. Critically, it has emerged that many bacteria, including L. pneumophila, maintain in their CRISPR-Cas loci a diary of sorts - recording the struggles that they and their ancestors have had to overcome in order to survive. As the old adage says, "the enemy of my enemy is my friend." Turning the tide of battle towards a pathogen's challengers may one day represent a promising strategy to prevent outbreaks and limit our exposure to microbial disease.