Terry Hwa, Ph.D.

PriME Project:

This project aims to study several aspects of microbial ecology in the context of marine bacterial communities. One area of focus is phytoplankton-bacteria interaction. The Hwa lab will assist the PriME collaboration by characterizing the physiology of selected bacteria and diatoms in establishing the cost of cross-feeding commodity compounds such as vitamins towards building a theory for the pricing of metabolic exchanges. The lab will also characterize various aspects of bacterial physiology related to the communities surrounding marine snow, including aggregation, chitin degradation and cross-feeding.

Bio:
Terry Hwa is the Presidential Chair and Distinguished Professor of Physics at the University of California, San Diego, with joint appointment in the Division of Biological Sciences. He is also the founding director of the quantitative biology program at UC San Diego. Hwa is a fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology, the American Physical Society and is a member of the National Academy of Sciences. In his research, Hwa develops theoretical and experimental approaches to gain quantitative and predictive understanding of living systems. He is particularly known for quantitative studies of bacterial physiology, including the establishment of a number of bacterial growth laws which led to a principle governing proteome allocation. The Hwa lab is continuing to extend their physiological approach to characterize bacterial species singly and in consortium, to uncover underlying principles governing the spatiotemporal dynamics of microbial communities, and to apply these principles to synthetic biology applications.