In collaboration with science artist Lizah van der Aart, we used my PhD research to design a chapter of a comic book anthology on ‘superbugs’. My goal was to educate the reader on the topic of antibiotic resistance and how chemistry plays a role in fighting it.
The chapter, ‘Resistance is Futile!’ is a journey through space where our spaceship encounter hostile bacteria. Our protagonists produce and fire antibiotics towards the threat with varying success, as some bacteria are resistant and can survive the attack. We show chemical structures and possible modifications to try and combat the surviving mutant bacteria. This mimics one way that antibiotics can be developed in a research lab environment, by taking antibiotics and through guided design (or trial and error), enhancing the molecules capability of killing bacteria.
The full chapter can be found in the Resist Now! comic book, along with four other research stories:
Nicola Wade 