About
Planetary Health = Human Health
The Functional Metabolomics Lab, part of the Department of Biochemistry and Institute for Integrative Genome Biology at the University of California Riverside aims to understand and control microbial communities. The group, led by Daniel Petras, combines a multidisciplinary approach at the interface of analytical chemistry, chemical biology, and microbial ecology.
The lab's mission is to develop functional metabolomics approaches that couple mass spectrometry-based chemical profiling and advanced computational approaches to bioactivity and perturbation assays. Our approach enables scalable causal discovery in microbiomes, host-associated communities, and environmental systems, with the goal to contribute to a better understanding and mitigation of global challenges such as declining planetary and human health.