As the ecological and evolutionary importance of symbiotic interactions between protists (microbial eukaryotes) and prokaryotes (bacteria and archaea) is better appreciated, keeping an overview of th...

Men-led papers receive more media coverage than women’s, new study finds

By Skype a Scientist

We are modern virus hunters, using metagenomic sequencing to discover viruses in a wide range of environments and hosts. Have fun exploring the marvels of microbiology on this website!

Computational methods and artificial intelligence on large-scale molecular data are transforming the study of biological systems and processes, ranging from molecular structures and cellular processes...

Human nasal microbiota often includes highly pathogenic members, many of which are antimicrobial resistance threats, e.g., methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus and drug-resistant Streptococcus ...

Our current carbon economy relies on fossil fuels, from which we isolate small organic molecules to produce medicines, plastics, cosmetic, or other chemicals that we use everyday. However, sustainability requires a more biomass-based carbon economy, where we engineer plants to produce precursor molecules, which can then be assembled to desired chemicals that we use daily. Plants have evolved an amazing diversity of metabolites, but these metabolites are not produced in every cell of the plant. Therefore, it is essential to understand how plants can express different metabolic pathways across different organs, tissues, and even cell types. We are interested in the following questions: How are metabolic pathways (especially specialized metabolism) controlled by cell fate? How can we reprogram plant cell fates for biomanufacturing? How can we toggle between differentiated cell states for metabolic engineering and totipotent cell state for genetic engineering?