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Welcome to the Laboratory of Molecular Biology and Applied Biotechnology (MBAB) website. The MBAB Lab is part of the Faculty of Food Science and Engineering and Biotechnology at the Technical University of Ambato. Our mission is to engineer enzymes and use microorganisms with desirable traits to address problems of modern society in human health, renewable energy, biomaterials and the environment.

Our research interest includes engineering enzymes involved in plastic waste and lignocellulosic biomass biodegradation, developing new therapies to combat antimicrobial drug resistance, and exploiting the potential of microorganisms to produce secondary metabolites with high value for the pharmaceutical, biofuel and biomaterials industry. We use two different approaches for our research. One is oriented to study key enzymes and peptides from the structural, mechanistic and phylogenetic perspective. The other aims to understand the physiology of native microorganisms, and take advantage of their metabolism, to develop new technologies. These two strategies complement and combine to contribute for the advancement of sustainable solutions and give rise to new questions in basic and applied research.

We invite you to explore our innovative projects and recent publications, as well as to meet our dedicated team members.

Liliana Cerda-Mejía & Mario D. García

MBAB Lab Heads