Chengdong Xu

Research in this project is designed to identify the key driving forces and environmental gradients that control material and energy fluxes through microbial communities and delineate their effects on community composition, structure, and function. We will also develop a mechanistic understanding of energy and carbon partitioning among community members under steady-state and during perturbations. Researchers will investigate the interplay between community spatial organization and function with ...

This project is focused on the functional characteristics and interactions of microbes within communities that determine the dynamics of community composition, function, and spatial organization. It uses an iterative experimental-modeling approach to elucidate principles that drive community dynamics in response to altered environmental conditions and examine the relative contributions of interspecies interactions and dispersive processes to changes in community spatial and functional heterogeneity. ...

This project is designed to identify the general principles governing the adaptive response of individual microbes to environmental perturbations within a community context. It seeks to establish the contribution of rapid, post-transcriptional regulatory processes in the overall adaptive response of communities to environmental stress and determine how responses of individual members contribute to community metabolic homeostasis.