Leaders: Zakee Sabree, Jessica Winter
Scope
The focus of this ERG is the development of technologies that enable automated nucleic acids extraction from and analyses of microbiomes in liquid-solid slurries. There is increasing focus on the role of the microbiome in complex ecosystems, such as the soil and gut microbiomes. Technologies to classify microbiome constituents rapidly would increase our ability to understand microbiome changes in response to changing environmental conditions. This team aims to develop new technologies with applications from infectious disease to soil ecology. This would enable hands-off detection of pathogens and microbes in these human-contacted flows by municipalities and other stakeholders.