Collaborators

Below is a list of some of the laboratories we work with:

The Andrew D. Ellington lab

The Ellington Lab is a biotechnology lab that engineers nucleic acids and proteins for biomedical and other applications. Nucleic acid biosensors (such as aptamers or ribozymes) and nucleic acid circuits (such as DNA computers) are being harnessed to diagnostic applications, especially for point-of-care diagnostics in resource-poor settings and for facile tumor detection. With our collaborators, we are developing analytical methods that apply to devices as simple as dipsticks and as complex as CMOS. Our protein engineering efforts focus on platform technologies for engineering and evolving enzymes involved in replication, transcription, and translation, and there are long-term efforts to expand the genetic code with nucleobases of amino acids so that proteins can more readily talk back to DNA and RNA. In collaboration with George Georgiou we adapt protein engineering techniques to generating therapeutic antibodies and immunoprofiling via NextGen sequencing and proteomics. The two arms of the lab come together in attempts to develop novel operating systems for organisms, based on the programmability of nucleic acid conformers. This has led to interesting applications in which decisions at the nanoscale are observed as macroscale patterns, horizontal transfer has been engineered, and synthetic biology has been reduced to an engineering discipline rather than a buzz word.

The FRI Mathematics in Context Stream

The Mathematics in Context (MIC) Stream was launched in 2014 as a companion to the Aptamer Stream. It incorporates the mathematical study of DNA topology and knotting problems in biological systems to further describe folding and binding phenomena observed by aptamers and other oligonucleotides. The stream's research seeks to provide context and motivation for its goals using students' spatial intuitions, interest in molecular biology, and aptamer research.

The Katherine Anne Brown lab

The Brown lab studies Burkholderia pseudomallei and B. mallei, which are the causative agents of melioidosis and glanders (respectively), two endemic infectious diseases in many parts of the world.

The Anne Moon lab

The Moon lab studies the role of Fibroblast Growth Factor 8b (FGF8b) in limb development.