The Systems and Synthetic Biology Lab conducts research aimed at redesign of photosynthetic organisms for biorenewable chemicals. Photosynthetic organisms such as cyanobacteria and plants, while deriving energy from light and carbon from atmospheric carbon dioxide, could be useful to produce food, fuel, and oxygen. However, the feasibility of utilizing these organisms hinge on the development of efficient platforms and genetic toolkits by systems and synthetic biology approaches. We focus on both computational and experimental techniques to overcome the challenges in utilizing these model organisms as platforms for producing bio-renewables. The multifaceted investigation performed by our lab has three main branches.

• Reconstruction of organism-scale and community models…read more
• Bioinformatics analysis and integration of ‘omics’ data…read more
• Development of genetic toolkits and metabolic pathway engineering…read more

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