Project title: High-efficiency Genome Reconstruction and Screening
Project description: The Microbe-Mineral Atlas is a multi-lab initiative to find and characterize genetic material, collected from field samples taken in various American mines, that may code for novel biological interactions with metals. Eventually, using these genetic sequences, the Barstow lab (of which I am a part) is hoping to engineer bacteria that will be able to sequester industry-key metals, providing a more sustainable solution to the acidic, high pressure, and high temperature techniques of current metal extraction. One of the principal hurdles in this goal is reconstructing the genomes of a multitude of organisms from fragmented DNA and preserving their functionality, so that any metal-binding behavior can be identified. In the very worst case, modeling shows that processing DNA fragments by individually checking if they code for interesting behaviors would take around 7 years! Therefore, the impetus of my lab’s and my own project is to discover how to reassemble these genomes and screen them efficiently, using color assays (essentially, an analytic test for metal-binding). Beyond my knowledge of biology and chemistry, my background in physics has been indispensable in thinking about the detection thresholds of colorimetric dyes, modeling the number of bacterial colonies required to cover a genome, and understanding the mechanisms of bioleaching!
Most important accomplishment: I am very proud of being a PADI-certified rescue diver!
Reflections on the College Scholar Program: So far, the free-reign extended to me as a College Scholar has been extremely empowering, as I explore the academic spaces most interesting to me. However, especially in biology, I have found that navigating research alone is daunting. Thinking back, my project could never have matured without the constant guidance from mentoring graduate students and postdocs, who were instrumental in deepening my understanding of the science at hand.