Postdoctoral Fellow
Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering department
University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Email: ecreasey2@unl.edu
About me
I earned my PhD in Biology here at UNL, and my BS in Plant Biology from the University of South Florida in Tampa, FL. I have been part of the Systems and Synthetic Biology laboratory, since August, 2024. Here I work on culture-based methods and synthetic biology tools to make the non-sulfur reducing bacteria Rhodopseudomonas palustris into a model organism and answering biological questions about its regulatory control over lignin degradation. Additionally, my primary research from my Ph.D. and future research focuses on deciphering the biology of melanized polyextremotolerant fungi. This involves studying various aspects such as cell biology, molecular biology, phylogeny, taxonomy, genetics, genomics, metabolomics, microbial ecology, and synthetic biology. I have isolated over 200 polyextremotolerant fungi from rock surfaces and desert biological soil crusts, and whole genome sequenced 6. However, my current main focus is on the novel polyextremotolerant fungus Exophiala viscosa (aka: Goopy) for which we have an annotated genome sequence and that I fully characterized in 2023. E. viscosa is distinct amongst not only polyextremotolerant fungi, but fungi in general because it produces and excretes copious amounts of melanin into its growth medium. I believe this phenomenon is related to its ecological role in its native environment, but can also potentially be exploited for medical and industrial purposes as a cost-effective form of melanin production. However, to maximize the melanin production from E. viscosa, and determine its ecological niche in its environment, we need to gain a comprehensive systems-level understanding of its regulatory and biomolecular control over its melanin production. Since E. viscosa is a novel organism, it does not come with its own genetic system, so me and my collaborators have been hard at work creating our own for genetic manipulation of E. viscosa. Using -omics methods, as well as genetic and synthetic biology, we have begun to identify key regulators and processes in E. viscosa that are essential to melanin production, and to develop the ability to genetically manipulate them.
In my spare time, I enjoy gardening both vegetable gardens and native perennial plants, watching Formula 1 racing, cooking foods from all cultures (especially meals coordinating to F1 race locations), drinking craft beers and fancy cocktails, hanging out with my pet rabbit Mr. Bun, playing co-op video games with my husband, and playing tabletop role-playing games like Dungeons and Dragons and Warhammer 40K.
Current projects in this Lab:
· Using culture-based methods, -omics, and synthetic biology tools to observe microbial symbioses in oligotrophic environments.
· Using synthetic biology methods to create inducible promoters in Rhodopseudomonas palustris, allowing us to optimize R. palustris as a model organism.
· Taking mathematical modeling data to answer biological questions in R. palustris’ regulatory control of lignin degradation