"How to become a pathogen: a survival guide for environmental bacteria"

Bacteria are everywhere, vastly outnumbering us, yet only a minority of them are capable of causing disease. Even fewer have evolved to exploit their hosts actively. In contrast, many opportunistic pathogens have acquired the ability to infect us only incidentally through adaptation to other environments. Our research employs non-tuberculous mycobacteria as a model to investigate the underlying mechanisms that make certain bacteria particularly skilled survivalists in the environment as well as in our bodies.