Heather H. Wilkinson

Professional Summary

I apply evolutionary and ecological genetics approaches and questions to a variety of microbial systems. At the most basic level our overarching goal in my program is to elucidate the genetic basis for adaptation and/or how the patterns of associated phenotypes are distributed in nature or across environmental conditions. My strategy in research is not only to directly test hypotheses central to a specific project, but also, to concomitantly build tools and resources necessary to expand and/or redirect the scope of the project as needed due to opportunity, curiosity or both. Such tools include items like databases, well-characterized libraries of biological materials, and experimental skill-sets among personnel. Currently,  I lead a collaboration among myself, Terry Gentry and Mark Holtzapple to optimize the microbial communities in a carboxylate biofuel platform (CBP) developed at Texas A&M, MixAlco^TM.  We seek to generate a deep understanding of community dynamics within the CBP across time and/or process conditions. Our current research emphasis involves evaluating screens of 501 communities collected over three years from 77 sites distributed throughout the continental United States, Puerto Rico, and Hawaii to determine the degree to which soil environments select for communities pre-adapted to conditions in commonly associated industrial processes with microbes, and 2) characterize the dynamics of many independent microbial communities within the CBP under a variety of process conditions and industrial scales. We are currently resolving a picture of the environmental conditions that prime the most optimal communities for this process, the particular functional categories of taxa that contribute to particular process performance phenotypes, and the role of process conditions in constraining CBP performance phenotypes and community diversity. In combination with other work to create a library of isolates (N>1800) from the top performing communities, we now have both testable hypotheses and well-characterized tools for the next stage where we will conduct directed studies of assembled communities. In addition I expanded into other collaborations associated with screening our isolate library for traits important to additional industries (e.g. bioremediation, hydrocarbon degradation, butanol production, agriculture).