The biological applications of our research are quite diverse ranging from microbiology and metagenomics, through to the mechanisms of human genetic disease and ageing. Traditionally we have a strong interest and background in microbial genomics and functional genomics particularly for Gram-positive microorganisms such as Bacillus and relatives.

We are applying our combined expertise in bioinformatics, data integration, evolutionary computation and microbial genomics to the problem of designing microbial systems, in the area of Synthetic Biology. We are particularly interested in model-driven design for synthetic biology and are exploring how biological data can be used to inform this design process. We also investigating approaches to facilitate an integrative and systems approach to biology, with a particular emphasis on modelling and networks.