Mock Plesa Lab

Department of Bioengineering

The Plesa Lab

Large scale protein engineering and characterization

Blue and white and red protein structure

OUR mission

Our mission is to accelerate the pace at which we understand and engineer biological protein-based systems.

We develop new technologies for gene synthesis, multiplex functional assays, in-vivo mutagenesis, and genotype-phenotype linkages for a number of different research areas and applications. These allow us to both access the huge sequence diversity present in natural systems as well as carry out testing of rationally designed hypotheses encoded onto DNA at much larger scales than previously possible.

Research

Our lab develops new technologies for gene synthesis, multiplex functional assays, in-vivo mutagenesis, and genotype-phenotype linkages for a number of different research areas and applications.

More about our research

plesa lab research knight campus
Plesa Lab in the Knight Campus Building 1

People

Meet the Plesa lab, a team of microbiologists, bioengineers and synthetic biologists. We are hiring, join the lab! 

Meet the Plesa Lab 

Resources

Explore resources from the Plesa Lab, including information about DropSynth, and courses that Calin teaches. 

Resources from the Plesa Lab

A man holds an award next to two large screens with his photo

Plesa Lab News

Calin Plesa, Ph.D., was recently promoted to associate professor with indefinite tenure in the Department of Bioengineering. Plesa joined the Knight Campus in June 2019 and has since built a research program that is reshaping how scientists design and test genetic sequences at scale.

New research from the Plesa lab offers a tool for scientists to find exact DNA sequences from large libraries in a fraction of the time.

The Plesa Lab 

Founded in 2020, the Plesa Lab is a synthetic biology research group within the University of Oregon's Phil and Penny Knight Campus for Accelerating Scientific Impact. Based in the Department of Bioengineering in Eugene, Oregon, the Plesa Lab builds scalable systems to accelerate the pace at which we understand and engineer biological protein-based systems.