Sandia National Labs: Chem/Bio

The Department of Energy’s GTL Project

Sandia is leading or participating in three of the Department of Energy’s (DOE) five Genomics: Genomics to Life (GTL) programs, which are conducting basic biological research to address crucial issues in energy production, environmental cleanup, and carbon cycling.

The Sandia-led Genomics: GTL project on carbon fixation (“Carbon Fixation in Synechococcus sp.: From Molecular Machines to Hierarchical Modeling”) is developing advanced computational biology tools and prototyping these tools to understand how marine cyanobacteria fix carbon. The results of this project may play a role in future climate-change strategies.

The carbon fixation project aims to:

Generate biological data for Synechococcus.
Understand the behavior of the molecular machines involved in the carbon fixation process.
Elucidate gene regulatory and protein interaction networks.
Develop predictive models of the carbon fixation process and its relevance to ecosystem response.
Build computational tools to enable high-throughput processing of experimental data.

Sandia is also contributing to projects to:

Rapidly deduct stress-response pathways in metal/radionuclide-reducing bacteria. Ultimately, the project team will develop computational models to describe and predict this stress response in microbes in contaminated waste sites.
Create capabilities for identifying and characterizing protein complexes.

Learn more about the other two DOE Genomics: GTL programs in which Sandia is participating.

Chem/Bio National Security

Defense Against Chemical and Biological Threats

The Department of Energy’s GTL Project