Cornell Center for Antimicrobial Resistance Research & Education Fall Seminar Series 2026

Title: Functional redundancy amongst PBPs confers condition-dependent beta-lactam resistance

Speaker Bio: Petra Levin is a Professor in the Department of Biology at Washington University in St. Louis. She received her Ph.D. from Harvard University and completed her postdoctoral training at MIT. Focusing on the intersection of the environment and microbial physiology, research in the Levin lab probes the mechanisms governing bacterial growth, cell cycle progression, and antibiotic sensitivity. Leveraging genetics, cell biology, and biochemistry, recent work illuminates cytoplasmic condensation as a response to sudden nutrient starvation, identifies connections between environmental pH and resistance to cell wall active drugs, and dissects the role of an intrinsically disordered region in assembly and function of the tubulin-like cell division protein, FtsZ.