Kivenson Lab

Lab Focus

The central theme of the lab research is microbial genetic code plasticity, which includes recoding (alternative genetic codes), frameshifting, and codon reassignment. I’m interested in new instances of code plasticity - what is the code used by a genome? I am also interested in how genetic code plasticity evolves – what processes result in the evolution of new genetic codes? Additionally, recoding can enable different microbial processes, and I’m interested in particular in microbial metabolism that is enabled by code flexibility.