We study phenomena at the intersection of Ecology and Evolution. We use a combination of dry and wet lab approaches to understand how different ecological interactions shape the evolutionary process, and how those ecological interactions evolve.

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We use reconstructed synthetic communities as models of wild ecological systems. We are interested in testing classical and novel ecological models and hypotheses. We aim to derive rules of bacterial community design to construct novel communities that can be applied to multiple challenges in human health, conservation, industrial processes, etc. We are interested in identifying the genetic basis of bacterial adaptation in host-associated communities. Throughout a single host´s life bacterial populations undergo hundreds or thousands of generations, allowing for the evolution of variants that compete against each other. We develop and apply population genomics, metagenomic and computational analysis methods to identify variants, genes and pathways that affect bacterial fitness in various contexts. Our goal is to formulate and test general principles that govern bacterial adaptation Human beings, like all other multicellular organisms, are constantly exposed to a wide array of bacteria, but only a handful of them become pathogenic, and an even smaller fraction circulate regularly in the human population. We use comparative genomics of related pathogens and non-pathogens in multiple hosts (i.e. humans, plants, etc) to identify the genomic features that lead to the evolution of pathogenic interactions.