EcoGenoRisk
Description: Synthetic biological (synbio) products pose a unique challenge for effective assessment and mitigation of risks. Unlike the handling of chemical agents, select synbio products maintain the ability to actively replicate within the environment, compounding on the mass and locations required to manage. This project focuses on developing an ecological risk assessment for the release of a full synthetic microbial cell (a subset of all synbio organisms) into an environmental matrix by developing the bioinformatic tool EcoGenoRisk.
Objectives: The objective of this project is to develop and deploy the Python-based EcoGenoRisk, a bioinformatic tool with three primary aims for the software to deliver: (1) identify those genomes within public databases that negatively respond to the product, display the most similarity genetically to the synbio microorganism, and/or harbor similar or competing pathways, in combination, defining the susceptible populations;(2) identify environmental habitats that are likely to harbor the susceptible populations; and (3) quantify both the likelihood of the synbio microorganism to arrive in the susceptible habitat and the extent of structural or functional disruption experienced by the resident microbial community.
This Project is Funded in Full by the Environmental Protection Agency.
Cresten Mansfeldt
Assistant Professor of Environmental Engineering
My research interests include microbial community structure and function, wastewater treatment, and microbial risk assessment and source tracking.