The Department of Energy’s Systems Biology Knowledgebase (KBase) is an ambitious program to disrupt the way we do biological systems science for prediction and engineering. It is an open-source, extensible platform that runs on DOE high-end infrastructure and supports collaborative, reproducible, reusable, and openly publishable analyses of organisms and their communities to predict and design their functions.
The Ecosystems and Networks Integrated with Genes and Molecular Assemblies (ENIGMA) Scientific Focus Area that we help lead is dedicated to developing a generalizable approach to predictive causal microbial ecology. We seek to molecularly dissect the dispersal, drift, and selective forces that shape the assembly and activity of microbial communities in complex spatially and temporally variable niches.
The Center for the Utilization of Biological Engineering in Space (CUBES) was created to develop generalizable approaches to support biomanufacturing for deep space exploration that realizes the inherent mass, power, and volume advantages of space biotechnology over traditional abiotic approaches.
Our lab has been involved in Synthetic Biology since its inception developing fundamental genetic technologies for precise and predictable control of gene expression, uniform design of gene expression networks, technologies for genome-scale manipulation and characterization of gene function; the design of host strains optimized for engineering for different applications; and foundational genetic and computational/data science technologies that support the creation of biofoundries.
