The Eastern Sierra Research Institute for Biotechnology conducts research in understudied and emerging fields in biochemistry for applications in medicine and technology.
Focus Area 1: The origin of life and early biochemical evolution. Darwinian evolution explains how species evolve and differentiate, but it does not explain how life could have arisen from inanimate matter on early Earth. We investigate into how the origin of life might could have occurred using both wet-lab chemistry and computer simulations.
Focus Area 2: Transposons and gene editing. Transposons are self-propagating DNA elements that exist in the genomes of most multicellular organisms, including humans. We investigate the mechanisms of transposon propagation with an eye towards developing treatments for cancer, genetic diseases, and age-related disorders.
Read more about our research here.