Abstract
Frequent antibiotic failure is a serious threat to public health. To cope with this threat, it is critical that we better understand population dynamics of bacteria exposed to antibiotics. In this talk, I will present our recent laboratory studies showing stochastic nature of bacterial eradication using antibiotics. Bactericidal drugs induce population fluctuations, leading to stochastic population dynamics. Consequently, bacterial clearance does not follow a deterministic course but is highly probabilistic. These population fluctuations may be manipulated to facilitate bacterial eradication.