Microbial Communities

Our work on microbial communities is funded by the Department of Energy’s Office of Biological & Environmental Research and include the ENIGMA Scientific Focus Area as well as programs in microbial community carbon cycling and knowledge-base.

A microorganism-based approach to address DOE mission goals in remediation, carbon sequestration and energy production will require quantitative understanding of biological complexity at multiple scales — from molecular networks of individual species to the dynamic inter-species interactions within the communities in which they reside. Our broad goals  are to understand biological complexity by discovering and predictively modeling interactions within microbial and community processes.  In doing so we expect to define biological principles governing selection of microbial community function and composition in given environments.