Gaurav Moghe

Metabolic pathways in plants are quite dynamic, resulting in production of over a million metabolites across ~300,000 estimated plant species. These metabolic pathways are in a constant state of innovation due to gene duplication, transcriptional divergence, enzyme promiscuity etc. How have specific metabolic pathways originated and diversified? What is the role of positive selection and genetic drift in shaping metabolic diversity? How does enzyme promiscuity influence evolution of specialized metabolic pathways? We are investigating these and other allied questions using evolutionary approaches, by performing comparative analyses of plant genomes, transcriptomes and metabolomes. 

Research in the Moghe lab is highly integrative and comprised of both computational and wet-lab approaches. Current research areas include:

• Characterizing plant metabolic diversity
• Discovering useful metabolites from plants
• Predictive computational genomics of metabolic complexity
• Evolution of metabolic complexity
• Biodiversity informatics

More information:

• Google Scholar profile and publications.
• Moghe Lab research areas

PLSCI 4000 / 6000  Concepts and Techniques in Computational Biology - This course is geared towards graduate students and advanced biology undergraduates seeking a better understanding of computational biology. Lectures will be a combination of presentations, paper discussions and hands-on sessions. Labs and paper discussions will have a significant component of plant science, but students from non-plant fields are also encouraged to register. Students will learn to work in a Unix environment, code using Python/R, and deploy tools for genome assembly, RNA-seq data analysis, local and global sequence alignment, protein domain searching using Hidden Markov Models, phylogenetic reconstruction, metabolomic analysis, and machine learning. Lectures will cover the algorithmic concepts underlying popular tools. The students will also learn practical aspects of implementing these tools in their own research using facilities available at Cornell.

Recent media

• Could Sweet Potatoes Provide Sweet Opportunities for New York? - Lancaster Farming
• From Data to Discovery: How C-SPIRIT Is Transforming Metabolite Annotation - C-SPIRIT News (Center for Sustainable Plant Innovation and Resilience Through International Teamwork)