People

Current lab members

Mark Somerville
Research associate – Engineering new GFPs and green fluorescent bacteria

Scott Mitchell
PhD Student – Equine hindgut microbiota and antibiotic resistance

Nick Yang
PhD student – Monooxgenases for biocatalysis

Claudia Moratti
PhD student – Engineering hydrocarbon biosensors

Brodie Gillieatt
PhD student – Heavy metal plasmids

Amos Anderson
Research assistant – Heterologous expression of psilocybin genes

Benj Gonzaga
Hons student – New genetic tools for cyanobacteria

Marcus Chung
Masters Student
iGEM teams
The International Genetically Engineered Machine Competition
iGEM is a global competition in synthetic biology, where students compete to create the most useful or novel GMO microbe. All the information that they generate and all the new DNA elements that they construct are made publicly available; this is an excellent example of open source science. The Coleman lab has hosted iGEM teams at the University of Sydney since 2013; click the photo to view each team’s project website. Their DNA parts can be found in the Parts Registry here.
iGEM 2013
“DCA Down Under”. From left: Cyril Tang, Vivian Li, (Nick Coleman), Robbie Oppenheimer, Andrew Tuckwell, James Bergfield, Shuravi Paul. (not shown): Desmond Li, Hugh Ford
iGEM 2014
“Easy cloni”. From left: Andy Bachler, Jeanne Zhang, Abigail Sison, Rokiah Alford, Callum Grey, Tom Connor
iGEM 2015
“Myco Mimic”. From left: Lizzie Richardson, Mark Somerville, Mahiar Mahjoub, Gaia Herrmann, Sandi Bo, Harrison Steel
iGEM 2016
“FRES(H)”. From left: Liam Ferguson, (Nick Coleman), Claudia Moratti, Amanda Chen, Wunna Kyaw, Alma Wu, Sholto Douglas, Sing-Young Chen, Orion Tong
iGEM 2017
“DISCO”. From left: Ruby Dawes, Erica Stewart, Grace Attrill, Courtney Pratt, Jamie Littleboy, Stephanie Sun, Alex Kelly, Emaleen Najjar
iGEM 2019
“Magic Coli” from left: Emma Todd, Isobel McGrath, Nathan Hawkins, (Nick Coleman), Fahad Ali, Merrie Caruana, Benj Gonzaga
igem 2021
“Free coli”. Clockwise from top left: Shae McLaughlin, Emily Cooper, Alex He, Rhys Michelis, Olivia Gorton, Simon Tang
iGEM 2022
“Nanobuddies”. from left: Lukian Adams, (Mark Somerville), Jasmin Li, (Claudia Moratti), Kawana Crowe, Donovan Wu, Jess Zhang, Jackie Yau, Sylvie Nolf, Oliver Nicholls, (Nick Coleman), Kiran Muthukrishnan
Past lab members

Nicole Groves
PhD student – Chemoenzymatic synthesis of new antibiotics

Yanwei Ma
PhD student – Metabolic engineering in Bacillus

Deb Rich
Research Assistant – Plant/microbe interactions

Josephine Conrade
Research assistant – Biodegradation of herbicides

Fiona Tang
Postdoc – Biodegradation of herbicides

Helen Douglas
Hons student -Biodegradation of chloromethylphenol

Naomi Jones
Honours student – Creating a synthetic DCA degrader

Daniele la Cecilia
PhD student – Glyphosate biodegradation in microcosms

Jake Munro
Research assistant – Mapping organochlorine biodegradation genes in groundwater

Michelle Ong
Grad Dip student – Engineering E.coli for dichloroethane biodegradation

Taylor Weetman
Grad Dip student – Expression of cytochrome p450 in E.coli

Frances Escobar
Honours student – Reconstruction of dichloroethane biodegradation pathway in E.coli

Ceri Jennings
Honours student – Expression of penicillin synthase enzyme in E.coli

Abigail Sison
Honours student – Development of synthetic gene cassettes for detecting integron activity

Vicky Kobylski
Honours student – Methanotrophic bacteria in Jenolan Caves

Sam Ross
Honours student – Expression of dehalogenases in E.coli

Emily Zhao
Honours student -Biodegradation of DDT and its metabolites

Kiri Martin
Honours student – Expression of SmoXYB1C1Z monooxygenase in Mycobacterium smegmatis

Vicky McCarl
Postdoc – Heterologous expression of monooxygenase components in E.coli

Carl Tong
Honours student – Mutagenesis of copper monooxygenase genes of Mycobacterium NBB4

Jazmin Oszvar
Honours student – Expression of SmoXYB1C1Z monooxygenase in Mycobacterium smegmatis

Becca Henry
Honours student – Characterisation of EtnD reductase from Mycobacterium NBB4

Simon Dingsdag
Honours student – Bacterial communities associated with apical periodontitis

Sam Cheung
PhD student – Biocatalysis for epoxide synthesis using monooxygenases

Alex Baume
PhD student -Development of probiotic and antibiotic scaffolds

Elissa Liew
Research assistant -Transcriptomics analysis of hydrocarbon oxidation in Mycobacterium

Alicia Gestal
PhD student – Devlopment of synthetic gene cassettes for detecting integron activity

Mai Anh Ly
PhD student – Heterologous expression of ethene monooxygenase

Morgaine Peart
Honours student – Investigation of plant-associated mycobacteria

Laura Nolan
Honours student – Growth kinetics of Mycobacterium NBB4

Sheree Yau
Honours student – Proteomics of Mycobacterium NBB4

Neil Wilson
Postdoc – Cloning monooxygenase gene clusters from Mycobacterium spp

Margaret Migocki
Postdoc – Heterologous expression of monooxygenases

Carmen Li
Honours student – Linking genotype and phenotype in Mycobacterium NBB4

Matt Quek
Honours student – Characterising monooxygenase genes in Mycobacterium NBB4

Nga Le
PhD student – Bioremediation of organochlorines using Mycobacterium NBB4
Collaborators and Friends
Peter Rutledge
Organic chemistry
Federico Maggi
Environmental engineering
John Kavanagh
Chemical engineering
Brian Jones
Plant molecular biology
Michael Kertesz
Soil microbiology
Jacqui Matthews
Structural biology
Marjorie Valix
Chemical engineering
Andy Holmes
Microbial ecology
Mike Manefield
Environmental microbiology
Tom Jeffries
Microbial bioinformatics
Colin Murrell
Environmental microbiology
Claudia Vickers
Synthetic biology
Liz Gillam
Microbial biotechnology
Jim Gossett
Environmental engineering
Jim Spain
Environmental microbiology
Tim Mattes
Environmental engineering
Michael Gillings
Molecular microbiology
Rob Willows
Plant biotechnology
Ian Paulsen
Microbial genomics
Sasha Tetu
Microbial genomics
Colin Scott
Synthetic biology
Gunjan Pandey
Environmental biotechnology
Chris Marquis
Microbial biotechnology
Amy Cain
Molecular microbiology
Brett Neilan
Microbial biotechnology
Chris Greening
Microbial ecology
Gary Muscatello
Veterinary microbiology
Nate Lo
Evolutionary Ecology
Ruth Zadoks
Veterinary epidemiology
Karl Hassan
Molecular microbiology
Federico Lauro
Marine microbiology
