Advancing technical capabilities (e.g., next gen sequencing) have revealed that microbial life abounds everywhere in the world, and it is now well recognized that microbes almost exclusively coexist in complex multispecies communities, typically comprised of 10^2-10^3 distinct species exhibiting myriad dynamic, competitive, antagonistic, and commensal interactions (microbiomes). While most of these microbes are generally beneficial and even necessary (e.g., gut microbes that aid digestion; nitrogen fixing microbes in soil), problems can arise when the naturally occurring ecologies are disrupted (e.g., algal blooms in the ocean; cavity formation on teeth). Nevertheless, community structure and dynamics are difficult to reproduce in the laboratory or even characterize experimentally. We are interested in using reproducible multispecies microbial biofilms of known composition (≈5-20 species) to characterize dynamic microbial behaviors (e.g., biofilm maturation and dispersal, quorum signaling, metabolism) and evaluate new and emerging measurement strategies for characterizing microbial communities (e.g., sequencing, shotgun metagenomics, mass spectrometry). Since this project is highly interdisciplinary, we are seeking applicants from many diverse fields including microbiology, chemistry, engineering, and analytical instrumentation.

 

Microbial communities; Microbiome; Biofilm; Sequencing; Metagenomics; Mass spectrometry; Metabolomics;

citizenship

Open to U.S. citizens

level

Open to Postdoctoral applicants