About BIOME

Microbes live in communities in, on, and around us, shaping human biology and the world through their collective behavior. An unbalanced human microbiome underlies a growing list of diseases, including cardiovascular disease, Alzheimer’s disease, and antibiotic-resistant infections. Microbes also influence the increasing greenhouse gas concentrations that threaten all life on Earth. The Berkeley Initiative for Optimized Microbiome Editing (BIOME) at the IGI is unlocking the power of CRISPR to understand microbial communities and precisely edit them in their natural environments. Our aim is to enable safe and wide-ranging solutions to currently intractable problems. Specifically, our research areas are:

1. Cultivating and characterizing microbial communities at the systems level
2. Developing technologies to edit natural microbial communities 
3. Editing microbial communities for positive human health, food production, and climate outcomes

Careers & Contact

• Find out about open positions in the Berkeley Initiative for Optimized Microbiome Editing on IGI's Careers page.
• For any inquiries about the Berkeley Initiative for Optimized Microbiome Editing's ongoing work or potential partnerships, please contact Brady Cress (cress@berkeley.edu), Spencer Diamond (sdiamond@berkeley.edu), or Ben Rubin (brubin@berkeley.edu).
• Lab webpages:
  • Banfield Lab
  • Cress Lab
  • Diamond Lab
  • Doudna Lab
  • Rubin Lab

Funding

Funding for the Berkeley Initiative for Optimized Microbiome Editing comes from the Shurl & Kay Curci Foundation and anonymous donors though the Audacious Project, an initiative of TED.