(r82) Barrick Lab :: UT Austin

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<table width'"100%"><tr><td><div style="float: right; margin:10px;"><a href="%WIKIHOMEURL%/%WEB%/FormerFrontPageImages"><img style="border-color: black;  border-style: solid; border-width: 3px;" width=270 height=270  src="%PUBURL%/%WEB%/FrontPageImages/coffee_bean_coli.png"></a><br><div align=center><b>Flying Spaghetti Monster meet synthetic<br>biology? Caffeine-addicted <i>E. coli</i><br>[[http://cafepress.com/barricklab][&laquo;Support the Barrick lab coffee fund&raquo;]]</b></div></div><div style="text-align:justify">
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%ICON{changes}% *May 2013:* Graduate students Michael Hammerling and Brian Renda pass their Part B Exams and are admitted to candidacy.
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%ICON{persons}% *April 2013:* Graduate student Gabriel Suarez and postdoc Dr.  Dennis Mishler join the lab.
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<img src="%PUBURL%/%WEB%/WebLeftBar/coffee_icon.png"> *March 2013:* Paper describing "addicted" _E. coli_ that can be used for decaffeination and measuring the caffeine content of beverages paper published in <a href="http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/sb4000146"><i>ACS Synthetic Biology</i></a>. [[http://voicerussia.com/radio_broadcast/72430379/111907796.html][Radio Interview]] | [[http://www.slate.com/blogs/trending/2013/04/01/caffeine_addiction_bacteria_study_shows_chemical_dependence_possible_in.html][Slate Video]]</td></tr></table>

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<img src="%PUBURL%/%WEB%/WebLeftBar/beacon_icon.png"> *January 2013:* Dr. Barrick appears in the [[http://beacon-center.org/blog/2013/01/08/beacon-introductory-video/][Introduction to BEACON video]] which explains the goals of this multi-institution NSF center to study evolution in action.</td></tr></table>

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<img src="%PUBURL%/%WEB%/WebLeftBar/CPRIT_icon.png"> *December 2012:*  The Cancer Prevention & Research Institute of Texas ([[http://www.cprit.state.tx.us/][CPRIT]]) funds research in the Barrick lab to study "Deep sequencing oncoviral evolvomes as a personalized cancer diagnostic tool".</td></tr></table>

[[%WIKIHOMEURL%/%WEB%/OldNews][Archived news items &raquo;]]

We are broadly interested in understanding evolution as a creative force. 

How does new information about the environment become fixed in genomes over evolutionary time? How do different kinds of mutations affect the ability to further adapt? What limits the speed of adaptation in a given population? What does the organization of information in a genome tell us about its past? Can we map fitness landscapes and chart what evolutionary trajectories are likely to be realized? How are microbial genomes evolving in the wild? Can we harness evolutionary processes to generate organisms or molecules that do useful tasks? Can we anticipate and frustrate the unfortunate evolution of microbial pathogens and cancers? Can we predict what mutations will sabotage the ingenious man-made contraptions of synthetic biology?

Answering these questions requires a systems level knowledge that spans the disciplines of evolutionary biology, microbiology, molecular biology, biochemistry, and computer science. Our approach is to use several model systems that allow one to manipulate the evolutionary process and follow the dynamics of evolution in real time: (1) experiments with digital organisms (Avida), (2) in vitro selection and evolution experiments with functional nucleic acids (DNA and RNA), and (3) experiments with bacteria (_E. coli_). There is an element of chance in evolution, and these systems allow one to compare many replicate experiments to quantitatively understand the diversity of possible outcomes. They also allow perfect control of the environment, so that the influences of various factors on evolutionary paths and the biochemical roles of individual mutations can be unambiguously teased apart. 

Currently, we are reconstructing the fine-scale dynamics of mutations within _E. coli_ populations from a 20-year evolution experiment using next-generation DNA sequencing and high-throughput genotyping methods, modeling these dynamics to understand the evolutionary forces at work, and searching for examples where bacteria with lower fitness than other contending lineages in the same population eventually prevail because they have greater evolutionary potential. 
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Barrick Lab > WebHome
Contributors to this topic
JeffreyBarrick, PeterThoeny, MichaelHammerling, CraigBarnhart, TWikiContributor, GabrielSuarez, AurkoDasgupta, BrianRenda, AlvaroRodriguez, KateElston, IsaacGifford, AustinMeyer
Topic revision: r82 - 2013-05-19 - 15:51:53 - Main.JeffreyBarrick