We curate data and use computational tools to quantify the biosphere and advance a holistic understanding of the global ecology. We believe that biomass is an especially useful metric for this purpose, helping to make ecosystems more tangible during the anthropocene.
Food production is the main user of land, water and other natural resources. We bring insights from systems biology to analyze the land, irrigation water and GHG emissions burdens associated with alternative dietary choices.
The lab harnesses the tools and approaches employed in systems biology to bear on the grand challenges of sustainability. We study carbon fixation, the molecular process supplying our food and fuel while carrying the largest flux in the biosphere. We design and build carbon fixation pathways in E. coli. In the process we gain quantitative insights on metabolism.
We use numbers as a sixth sense to understanding our cells. We look at living world through a quantitative lens. Check out the freely available book, the BioNumbers database we manage, and as an example our findings on the number of cells in the body.
