Stefanie Heß

Modern human medicine relies on the availability of effective antibiotic agents. Major surgeries, organ transplants, and the treatment of immune-suppressed patients would be unthinkable in the absence of antimicrobial therapy. The rapid and global spread of antibiotic resistance is therefore alarming. However, there is currently little quantitative knowledge about the driving processes which is urgently needed in order to be able to establish powerful strategies minimizing or even stopping the dissemination of antibiotic resistance. Our overarching aim is to contribute to a deeper mechanistic understanding of the emergence, persistence and dissemination of antibiotic resistance genes and resistant bacteria. Therefore, experiments are complemented with mathematical modeling (ODE and ABM). Moreover, statistical models are employed to detect and summarize trends in empirical data.  In our experiments it is particularly important to us that the process rates determined in the laboratory correlate with those in the environment. We are interested in how environmental parameters effect vertical and horizontal gene transfer as well as the persistence of antibiotic resistance genes in different compartments (planktonik phase, biofilm).

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2020
Junior Group Leader, General Microbiology, Institute of Microbiology, TU Dresden

2019 – 2020
Postdoctoral Associate, General Microbiology, Institute of Microbiology, TU Dresden

2018 – 2019
Postdoctoral Associate, Department of Microbiology, University of Helsinki, Finland

2016 – 2018
Postdoctoral Associate, Institute of Hydrobiology, TU Dresden

2015 – 2016
Postdoctoral Associate, Department of Microbiology, University of Applied Science, Emden/Leer

2012 – 2015
Doctoral Candidate, Institute of Biology for Engineers and Biotechnology of Wastewater Treatment, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Karlsruhe

2012
Diploma of Geoecology, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Karlsruhe

Heß S, Hiltunen T, Berendonk TU, Kneis D. (2020). High variability of plasmid uptake rates in Escherichia coli isolated from sewage and river sediments. PLoS ONE. 15(4):e0232130. doi: 101371/journal.pone.0232130 PLoS ONE

Kneis, D., Hiltunen, T., Heß, S. (2019): A high-throughput approach to the culture-based estimation of plasmid transfer rates. Plasmid 101: 28-34. DOI: 10.1016/j.plasmid.2018.12.003 [Pubmed]

Kneis, D., Berendonk, T.U., Heß, S. (2019): High prevalence of colistin resistance genes in German municipal wastewater. Sci Total Environ 694: 133454. DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2019.07.260 [Pubmed]

Heß, S., Kneis, D., Österlund, T., Li, B., Kristiansson, E., Berendonk, T.U. (2019): Sewage from airplanes exhibits high abundance and diversity of antibiotic resistance genes.       Environ Sci Technol 53(23): 13898-13905. DOI: 10.1021/acs.est.9b03236 [Pubmed]

Falgenhauer, L., Schwengers, O., Schmiedel, J., Baars, C., Lambrecht, O., Heß, S., Berendonk, T.U., Falgenhauer, J., Chakraborty, T., Imirzalioglu, C. (2019): Multidrug-resistant, clinically relevant Gram-negative bacteria are present in German surface water samples. Front Microbiol 10: 2779. DOI:10.3389/fmicb.2019.02779 [Pubmed]

Book Chapter: Bengtsson-Palme, J., Heß, S. (2019): Strategies to reduce or eliminate resistant pathogens in the environment. Antibiotic Drug Resistance, Wiley. DOI: 10.1002/9781119282549.ch24

More publications can be found here.