User:HP0311/Jillian Banfield

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Banfield is an earth scientist who studies the structure, functioning and diversity of microbial communities in natural environments and the human microbiome. '''Banfield was part of a group that discovered a process called environmental transformation sequencing, which is a way to manipulate and identify the changeable microbes in a community. Using environmental transformation sequencing, the group was able to understand how easy it is to genetically modify different bacteria species, using a numerical method. ''' Her laboratory and collaborators pioneered the reconstruction of genomes from natural ecosystems and community metaproteomic analyses. Through genomics, her group has provided insights into previously unknown and little known bacterial and archaeal lineages, leading to a new rendition of the Tree of Life. She has conducted extensive research on natural and synthetic nanomaterials, exploring the impacts of particle size on their structure, properties and reactivity. Her lab described the oriented attachment-based mechanism for growth of nanoparticles and its implications for development of defect microstructures. She has also studied microorganism-mineral interactions, including those that lead to production of nanomaterials.