![[Biotechnology Center for Agriculture & the Environment]](http://njaes.rutgers.edu/_common/images/subheads/biotech.gif "[Biotechnology Center for Agriculture & the Environment]"){kind=small}
The center's multi-disciplinary faculty perform basic and applied research in biotechnology. Drawn from the departments of Plant Biology & Pathology, Biochemistry & Microbiology, Environmental Sciences, and Animal Sciences, the faculty work at the forefront of their fields to generate new knowledge and understanding in the biological sciences. Our research efforts have gained national and international recognition and have attracted more than $59 million in competitive funding at the state, national, and international levels, reflecting the high quality and relevance of our projects. See summaries of research in faculty laboratories from links on the faculty pages.
We welcome the opportunity to work with our colleagues across the Rutgers campuses and beyond. More than half of the grant-funded projects involve collaborators from outside the Center, from colleagues at Rutgers to those at prominent U.S. universities and in international institutions in Europe, Central Asia, and South America.
Discoveries and Accomplishments
- Plant proteins conferring disease resistance in plants and humans
- Production of pharmaceuticals by secretion from plant roots
- Genes for disease resistance in higher plants
- First system to visualize chromatin movement in live plants
- Technology for microbial bioremediation of environmental pollutants
- Elucidation of microbial biodegradation pathways
- Pathway and enzyme engineering for biocatalysis
- Elucidation of endocrine systems in human disease and development
- Development of animal models for gene therapies
- More than 1,000 peer-reviewed publications
Major Research and Training Projects at the Biotech Center
Environmental and Health Genomics
The development of powerful analytical and manipulative research tools, such as very large-scale sequencing and high throughput functional genomics coupled with significant developments in computational analysis and systems biology provides an opportunity to address at the molecular level how organisms and communities of organisms interact with each other and with their environments. In addition, the genomics tools that have been so useful for understanding the biology of model systems are now applicable to many other organisms, including plants, animals, and microbes. These approaches are providing an understanding of genome dynamics within individual organisms as well as those that operate at the level of communities, populations and evolving systems.
Superfund Projects
Drs. Kukor, Zylstra, and Young lead long-term research projects on environmental bioremediation with collaborators at Michigan State University (Kukor and Zylstra) and New York University (Young) with support from the NIEHS Superfund Program. The work of Drs. Kukor and Zylstra focuses on the degradation of toxic polyaromatic compounds by microbial communities in order to develop diagnostic tools that predict biodegradation at contaminated sites (see http://cit.msu.edu/Superfund/coreE.html and http://cit.msu.edu/Superfund/project6.html). Dr. Young is investigating the role of microbes in the biogeochemical cycling of chromium and arsenic in the environment, with the goal of developing molecular markers for microorganisms which can metabolize the contaminants.
Botanical Center
The Botanical Research Center is a Dietary Supplement Research Center focusing on Botanicals. It is a collaborative effort funded by NIH between the Pennington Biomedical Research Center of the Louisiana State University (LSU) system and the Biotechnology Center for Agriculture and the Environment of Rutgers University. The Botanical Core component of the program is led by Dr. Ilya Raskin at the Biotech Center and uses recently developed methods for the discovery, characterization, standardization and production of bioactives proven successful in developing novel botanicals that are currently in clinical trials.