Research

Our research is focused on Metabolic Engineering - the improvement of cellular properties, using modern genetic tools. This field encompasses two important components:

1. The modification of biochemical pathways inside cells, and
2. The rigorous evaluation of the resulting cellular phenotypes.

Our most recent research has been focused on the following topics:

• Metabolic Engineering of E.Coli for the production of biochemicals

• Inverse Metabolic Engineering

• gTME

• Flux Determination

• Hepatocyte Physiology

• Metabolomics

• Rational Drug Design

• Systems Biology

To accomplish the above goals we make use of a diverse array of scientific tools and methods, many of which have also become areas of research for our group:

• Bioinformatics and Systems Biology - Our group was one of the first to realize the importance of computational tools for handling the large volume of data generated by microarrays and other technologies.

• Methods for intracellular flux determination - Fluxes are determined by material balancing, NMR fine spectra analysis and GC-MS measurements.

• DNA microarrays - We have developed full genome microarrays for Synechocystis Sp., and partial microarrays for C. glutamicum, E. coli, and the mouse genomes.

• Bioreaction network analysis