Ragnhild Sødal Gjennestad

Ragnhild Sødal Gjennestad

PhD Candidate

  • MiNDS

I am a PhD student in microbiology in the Molecular Microbiology Group at the Faculty of Chemistry, Biotechnology and Food Science at NMBU. My project aims to find new insights to penicillin resistance in the human pathogen Streptococcus pneumoniae. The project is connected to a collaboration between the Molecular Microbiology Group and the National Institute of Public Health (NIPH). My main supervisor is Associate Professor Daniel Straume and my co-supervisors are Associate Professor Morten Kjos and Dr. Vegard Eldholm (NIPH).

Read more about the project here: Disentangling penicillin resistance and compensatory adaption in pneumococci by combining genomics and molecular microbiology

Pneumococci are particularly good at changeing their genes through natural competence. In this project, we are specifically interested in identifyling which genes change and why. This brief video demonstrates how pneumococci modify their genes in response to environmental stress: