Genetically engineered microbes and viruses have the potential to transform chemical production, therapeutics development, and our entire economy to be more efficient and sustainable.  A barrier to realising this vision is the fact that currently all genetic engineering design choices are driven by a fear of breaking the system in unanticipated ways. For example, the synthetic Mycoplasma genome created by Craig Venter's group almost completely recapitulated the natural sequence, while the ambitious Yeast 2.0 project has specifically refrained from any gene sequence modification for fear of unintended consequences.

There is currently a sobering disconnect between the explosive growth in our ability to synthesize DNA of any arbitrary sequence we desire, and our ability to design functional genomes.

The Jaschke lab is currently working to answer three fundamental questions in the field of genome engineering using the model bacteriophage øX174:

(1) What are the essential minimal components of the øX174 genome?

(2) In what ways can we reconfigure the essential øX174 genome components while still maintaining a viable virus?

(3) How can we use evolution to tune our rational øX174 genome designs?