Ophelia S. Venturelli

The Venturelli Lab aims to understand and engineer the spatiotemporal behaviors of microbial communities. We seek to elucidate the molecular and ecological design principles of microbial communities using tools from systems & synthetic biology. Our lab uses microfabrication methods to probe how spatial heterogeneity influences microbial communities and develops high-throughput methods to study microbial interactions in microbiomes. A major goal is to design novel strategies to precisely shift microbiomes to desired metabolic states.

We are fascinated by the complexity of the human gut microbiome and how to control microbiome functions. We study how microbial interaction networks impact the assembly, stability and functions of the human gut microbiome. In addition, we design novel circuits in key commensal or probiotic bacteria to sense and respond to environmental stimuli for therapeutic applications.

Schematic of a microbial interaction network highlighting they key intracellular networks and metabolites mediating each interaction.