Lidstrom Lab for C1 Metabolism

Owen presenting at 2025 UW Undergrad Symposium

Mia presenting at 2025 UW Undergrad Symposium

Ivan presenting at 2025 UW Undergrad Symposium

About Us

The Lidstrom laboratory is located in the Departments of Microbiology and Chemical Engineering at the University of Washington in Seattle, WA.

Research in Dr. Lidstrom's laboratory is focused on molecular and metabolic manipulations of methylotrophic bacteria, which are capable of growth on methane, methanol, and methylated amines. Systems-wide and synthetic biology approaches are applied to metabolic networks to gain basic understanding and lay the groundwork for systems-based metabolic engineering. The long-term goal of this research is to develop economically viable approaches to utilize stranded methane gas as a feedstock for generating valuable biomass-related products. A second focus of the laboratory is to develop bioreactor-based systems using methane-utilizing bacteria (methanotrophs) to slow climate change by removing methane from the atmosphere at scale.

Below, Mia Grayson, Naomi Kern, and Owen Rosenbluth, undergraduate researchers, showing off our bioreactor of M. buryatense growing at 500 ppm methane.

Recent News

2025

Mia, Owen, and Ivan all present posters at the UW Undergraduate Research Symposium

Former lab member Naomi Kern elected to the Husky 100--congratualtions Naomi!

Former lab member Naomi Kern accepted offer to pursue PhD at UC-Berkeley--congratulations Naomi!

Mary receives funding from the EQT Foundation to carry out a field trial of the methane removal technology.

2024

Mia is awarded the Sophomore Medal for her outstanding academic achievement--congratulations Mia!
Mary gives seminar on methanotroph-based methane removal to iFAST group, available at this link: https://bit.ly/3MVkKXw
New undergraduates join lab: Ivan Fernandez Victoria and Harini Vijay, both Microbiology rising Juniors
Perspective article with Prof. Lisa Stein published in Science

Stein LY, Lidstrom ME. Greenhouse gas mitigation requires caution. Science. 2024 Jun 7;384(6700):1068-1069.

New review on growth of methanotrophs at low methane published in Advances in Microbial Physiology
Lidstrom Lab methane removal project featured on UW home page

https://www.engr.washington.edu/news/article/2024-01-29/methane-mitigation-mary-lidstrom

2023

Mary presents invited talk at National Academies workshop on Atmospheric methane removal
Owen Rosenbluth joins the lab to carry out undergraduate research--welcome Owen!
PNAS paper is published describing the ability of M. buryatense to grow well at 500 ppm methane and below: He et al. 2023 PNAS 120:e110046120
Naomi spends a month in Sevilla España on an immersion short course in Spanish.
Ruben Tapia and Hanna Zamora-Escalona join the lab for summer undergraduate research.
Vrishab graduates with CSE honors.
Erin defends her PhD thesis. Congratulations Dr. Wilson!
Vrishab and Naomi present their research at the UW Undergraduate Symposium.
Vrishab accepts position at Kallyope, starting summer 2023.
Vrishab leads Impact++ team in hackathon at Boston U, wins award in his category.
Vrishab presents his work at the UW Computational Molecular Biology Annual Symposium.
Mia Grayson is joins the lab as an undergraduate researcher!

2022

Sergey Stolyar joins lab October 2022
Naomi has won a Mary Gates Fellowship and a Smith scholarship.
Joseph has accepted an Assistant Professor position at California State University-Long Beach in the Biological Sciences Department! He will begin in January 2023.
Lian starts his new position as Acting Instructor.
Vrishab receives a Washington Research Foundation Fellowship!
Mary officially moves to Emeritus status as of September 1
Two new NSF projects start: “Construction of a bacterium with optimized methane consumption at 10ppm for climate change mitigation” and “Direct methane capture in air by aerobic methanotrophs.”
Vrishab receives a Mary Gates Research Scholarship.
Erin receives a Scan Design Foundation Fellowship to support her research collaboration in Denmark.
Naomi Kern joins the lab as an undergraduate researcher.

2021

Erin passes her General Exam.
Jue's paper about a novel formate reduction pathway gets accepted to Oxford University Press.
Erin's proposal is accepted to the ICML Workshop: Tackling Climate Change with Machine Learning (Proposal and Recording).
Joseph and Mary publish a Chapter about methanotroph lanthanide metal uptake in Methods in Enzymology.
Evan Ross joins the lab as a undergraduate researcher.
Erin, Joseph, and Claire's paper on developing a computational framework for promoter identification from RNA-seq data is published in ACS Synthetic Biology (Article)
Congrats to Claire on her post-graduation job as a Research Technician in the Parkhurst lab at Fred Hutch!

2020

Vrishab Sathish Kumar joins the lab as an undergraduate researcher.
Lian and Joseph's paper on the essentiality of the ED pathway in M. buryatense 5GB1C is published in Applied Environmental Microbiology (PubMed)
Mary is an author on a recent paper on "Moving academic research forward during COVID-19" published in Science (PubMed)
Mary is an author on a recent paper on "The Role of Synthetic Biology in Atmospheric Greenhouse Gas Reduction: Prospects and Challenges" published in BioDesign Research (Article).
Letícia Cardoso joins the lab as a visiting graduate student from the University of Saõ Paulo.
Mary speaks on a panel about "Balancing science with concerns about national security" at the AAAS meeting in Seattle.

2019

Mary presents at the Boston University Workshop on Synthetic Biology for Climate Change, “Synthetic Biology for Methane Mitigation.”
Lian’s paper on 5GB1 methane and methanol metabolism is published in mSystems. (PubMed)
Erin presents at the University of Michigan Data Science Symposium, “Using microorganisms to solve macro-problems: untangling the genetic circuitry of methane-eating bacteria.”
Jue and Liz welcome new baby Marcus!
Erin passes her Quals Evaluation.
Jin Wang joins the lab as a visiting scholar.
Congrats to Mitch on his new job at Adaptive Biotechnologies!
Joseph’s paper on the TonB-dependent receptor in the 5GB1c lanthanide metal switch is published in the Journal of Bacteriology. (PubMed)
Congrats Jing and Zheng on their new positions at Central South University in China!
Yanfen’s paper on 5GB1’s core metabolism shift is published in mBio. (PubMed)
Erin receives an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship.
Jue visits the Tawfik lab at the Weizmann Institute.
Aaron’ paper on interspecies chemical signalling is published in Applied Environmental Microbiology. (PubMed)
Mitch and Katie welcome new baby Carter!
Erin Wilson joins the lab as a graduate student.

2018

Congrats to Aaron on his new position at the University of Utah!
Jue Wang joins the lab with a postdoctoral fellowship from the WRF.
Aaron’s paper on tundrenone is published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society. (PubMed)

2017

Joseph Groom joins the lab as a post-doc.