About Professor Ruth Hall
The exciting thing about working on how antibiotic resistance genes move about in bacterial populations is that there are still novel mechanisms to be found.
While studying the spread of antibiotic resistance genes in bacteria, I discovered integrons and gene cassettes and a second gene mobilization system which has yet to be fully characterized.
Ruth Hall is internationally recognized as an expert in the field of dissemination of antibiotic resistance genes and has worked in the area for over 20 years. She is best known for the discovery and characterisation of integrons and gene cassettes, which are now recognized as a major source of the antibiotic resistance genes in gram negative bacteria with a current count of well over 100 cassette-associated resistance genes. She has published over 50 peer-reviewed manuscripts in this area and is the author of several seminal reviews. She has been an Editorial Board Member of the the field's top-ranked journal, Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy, since 1998. Awards include the Aventis sanoiofi Group Award 2005 at International Congress of Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy from the American Society for Microbiology and, from the Australian Society of Microbiology, the BioMerieux-ASM Identifying Resistance Award in 2003 and Rubbo Orator in 2006. She was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Sciences in 2005. She has written a number of reviews that are highly cited. The work on antibiotic resistance has been continuously supported by NHMRC grants for 20 years and Prof. Hall is currently an NHMRC Senior Principal Research Fellow.
Selected publications
- Levings, Renee S., Lightfoot, Diane, Partridge, Sally R., Hall, Ruth M. and Djordjevic, Steven P. (2005) The genomic island SGI1 containing the multiple antibiotic resistance region of Salmonella enterica var. Typhimurium DT104 or variants of it is widely distributed in other S. enterica serovars. J. Bacteriol., 187: 4401-4409. PubMedId: 15968049
- Partridge, Sally R. and Hall, Ruth M. (2003) In34, a complex In5 family class 1 integron containing orf513 and dfrA10. Antimicrob. Agents Chemother. 47: 342-349. PubMedId: 12499211
- Collis, Christina M., Kim, Mi-Jurng, Stokes, H. W. and Hall, Ruth M. (2002) Integron-encoded integrases preferentially recognize the adjacent cognate attI site in recombination with a 59-be. Molec. Microbiol. 46: 1415-1427. PubMedId: 12453226
- Liebert, Cynthia A., Hall, Ruth M. and Summers, Anne O. (1999). Transposon Tn21, Flagship of the floating genome. Microbiol. Mol. Biol. Rev. 63: 507-522. PubMedId: 10477306
- Stokes, H. W., O'Gorman, D.B., Recchia, Gavin D., Parsekhian, Maryam, and Hall, Ruth M. (1997). Structure and function of 59-base element recombination sites associated with mobile gene cassettes. Molec. Microbiol. 26: 731-745. PubMedId: 9427403
- Collis, Christina M. and Hall, Ruth M. (1995). Expression of the antibiotic resistance genes in the integrated cassettes of integrons. Antimicrob. Agents Chemother. 39: 155-162. PubMedId: 7695299
- Hall, Ruth M. and Collis, Christina M. (1995). Mobile gene cassettes and integrons: capture and spread of genes by site-specific recombination. Molec. Microbiol. 15: 593-600. PubMedId: 7783631
- Recchia, Gavin D. and Hall, Ruth M. (1995). Gene cassettes: a new class of mobile element. Microbiol. 141: 3015-3027. PubMedId: 8574395
- Collis, C.M., Grammaticopoulos, G., Briton, J., Stokes, H.W. and Hall, R.M. (1993). Site-specific insertion of gene cassettes into integrons. Molec. Microbiol. 9: 41-52. PubMedId: 8412670
- Stokes, H.W. and Hall, Ruth M. (1989). A novel class of potentially mobile DNA elements encoding site specific gene insertion functions: integrons. Mol. Microbiol. 3: 1669-1683. PubMedId: 2560119