Ophelia Venturelli

Education

• PhD, 2013, California Institute of Technology
• BS, 2006, Stanford University

Contact Info

Simons Fellow of the Life Sciences Research Foundation (LSRF)
University of California Berkeley
2151 Berkeley Way
Berkeley, CA 94704
osventurelli - at - berkeley.edu

Research interests

Microbes are continuously bombarded with a diverse set of environmental stimuli. To survive and reproduce, a cell must accurately sense and respond to these signals. Biological systems must optimally balance the ability to rapidly adapt to environmental fluctuations with energetic constraints and resource availability. I am interested in the analysis and control of biological systems spanning intracellular circuits to population dynamics. My work uses a combination of theory, computational modeling, and experimentation. I am currently a postdoc in Adam Arkin’s lab at UC Berkeley where I have been developing engineering strategies for controlling cellular resource allocation and engineering stable synthetic microbial communities.

Publications

1. Venturelli OS, Zuleta I, Murray RM, El-Samad H. Population diversification in a yeast metabolic program promotes anticipation of environmental shifts. PLoS Biol. 2015, 13(1):e1002042.
2. Venturelli OS, El-Samad H, Murray RM. Synergistic dual positive feedback loops established by molecular sequestration generate robust bimodal response. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA. 2012, 109(48):E3324-33.
3. Renault VM, Thekkat PU, Hoang KL, White JL, Brady CA, Kenzelmann Broz D, Venturelli OS, Johnson TM, Oskoui PR, Xuan Z, Santo EE, Zhang MQ, Vogel H, Attardi LD, Brunet A. The pro-longevity gene FoxO3 is a direct target of the p53 tumor suppressor. Oncogene. 2011, 30(29):3207-21
4. Bloom JD, Lu Z, Chen D, Raval A, Venturelli OS, Arnold FH. Evolution favors protein mutational robustness in sufficiently large populations. BMC Biol. 2007, 30(29):3207-21