Garret William O’Connell Ph.D. student 
Sulfonate degradation is what gets me up in the morning and sulfonate transport keeps me going. I am the Uber Eats for sulfonate metabolism in our Pseudomonas putida (p.s. they can be fluorinated!).
Research
My work focuses primarily on studying and manipulating sulfonate degradation systems for metabolic engineering. These family of molecules is the potential starting point of many metabolically-relevant compounds and my work focuses on developing Pseudomonas platforms that can use aliphatic sulfonates as carbon and sulfur sources. To this end, I am mapping the substrate range of the sulfur-sulfonate utilization systems native to Pseudomonas putida. I am interested in mapping the usage of sulfonates which may confer neo-metabolites to our favorite bug or that can be used as entry points for engineering novel metabolic nodes.