MORGAN RESEARCH GROUP

Morgan Lab Research Areas

Overview

The focus of our group is the analysis and manipulation of metabolic pathways. With an increased understanding of the regulation of metabolism, scientists and engineers can rationally manipulate pathways to produce novel compounds or increase the production of specialty compounds. Quantifying metabolic flux is a critical technology that forms the basis for rational metabolic engineering. Our group has been developing the mathematical modeling and experimental tools for the particularly difficult problem of quantifying fluxes in photoautotrophic organisms. The current focus is engineering fast growing cyanobacteria to produce valuable biochemicals sustainably, on understanding the transport of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) by mathematical modeling and metabolic engineering, and on quantifying intracellular metabolite fluxes in cyanobacteria and plants by liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) and gas chromatography-MS (GC/MS).