Description of Research Group
At PhotoSynLab (together with Martin Hohmann-Marriott) we have activities within the fields of photosynthesis, synthetic biology and biophysics. My main personal focus is within transcriptional and translational regulation, biological tools development, biophysics, and synthetic biology. In our lab we are working with various microorganisms such as Escherichia coli, Pseudomonas putida KT2440, psychrophilic Pseudomonas, Psychrobacter spp., Corynebacterium glutamicum, Streptomyces albus, S. coelicolor, S. lividans, Synechococcus sp. PCC 7002, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, and Thermus thermophilus.
We have activities within various research topics.
Within photosynthesis:
- Role of pili in the acquisition of metals from metal oxides by cyanobacteria
- Photosynthetic machinery of heterokont algae
Within synthetic biology:
- Synthetic biology toolbox development
- Synthetic promoter design
Within biophysics:
- Microfluidics
- Single-cell arrays
We have both national (RCN and NTNU) and international projects (EU and USA), and currently the lab is consisting of 13 researcher: two PIs, six PhD stipends, one post-doctoral researcher, one senior researcher and three Master’s students.
Technology, expertise and equipment
Technology:
- Synthetic promoter-5′ UTR design;
- Conjugation based DNA transformation;
- Microfluidics;
- Single-cell arrays.
Equipment:
- Liquid-handling robots;
- Microfluidics set-up;
- qPCR;
- Fluorescent microscopes.
Expertise:
- Systems and synthetic biology;
- Gene expression systems design;
- Heterologous protein production;
- Single-cell analysis;
- Bioinformatics;
- Mathematical modelling.
