Moe, Luke

Moe Lab Research Overview

The Moe lab conducts research in environmental microbiology, including genetics, genomics, ecology, and biochemistry of microbes of importance to agriculture and biotechnology.  Current projects include (1) understanding the structure and function of plant microbiomes as they pertain to plant health, agricultural yield, and post-harvest processing.  We also have an interest in (2) the microbial ecology of fermentation, including solid state fermentation of plant materials and grain-based fermentation to produce spirits and fuel ethanol.  We have collaborative efforts in microbial ecology across the University with research groups in the College of Medicine and the College of Arts & Sciences.

We use next-gen DNA sequencing tools for genome analysis of bacteria relevant to our projects, transcriptome analysis of model soil- and rhizosphere-dwelling bacteria, and metagenomic analysis of microbial communities.  We commonly employ 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing to characterize bacterial community structure.


Bacterial community analysis in reference smokeless tobacco products

Working in collaboration with the UK Center for Tobacco Reference Products (CTRP), we will employ 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing to characterize shifts in bacterial communities in smokeless tobacco products with storage time and temperature.

Computational Methods:

The cluster will be used to process .fastq.gz files thorough the Mothur pipeline, following the SOP on https://mothur.org/wiki/miseq_sop/.

Students:

Audrey D. Law, Postdoc, Added 11/11/2020

Shuang Liu, Postdoc, Added 11/11/2020

Kent D Pham, Graduate, Added 06/15/2021

Kent D Pham, Graduate, Added on MCC cluster 03/14/2023 

Software:

Mothur is the only software we plan to use.

Collaborators:


Grants:


Publications:

Center for Computational Sciences