1. Soil Metagenomics: As in many regions of the globe, the native habitats
of Florida are rapidly disappearing. Florida has been ranked as the state
with the greatest degree of risk for loss of biodiversity. Our project goals
are to build a microbial inventory of the imperiled sites, to study the
microbial functional ecogenomics and to develop a knowledge base of functional
microbial biosensors.
2. Novel Antibacterial Compounds: Isolating DNA from soil samples and
screening for the production of novel compounds with anti-pseudomonal activity.
3. Surveillance Profiling: Pathogens, both known and emerging, as well
as antimicrobial resistance is a real and present danger in the environment.
One of our project goals is to develop a suite of surveillance profile assays
that will rapidly identify known pathogens and antimicrobial resistance
genes found in pristine and impacted sites (i.e, agricultural sites).
