My laboratory based at The University of Texas El Paso centers on understanding the intercellular interactions among cellular elements of a given biological system that leads to the emergence of complex biological functions increasing the heterogeneity within the system. This allows a population of cells to execute complex tasks as a community that otherwise cannot be archived by their individual components. This fundamental property in cell biology determines health and disease outcomes including the immune response, cancer development, microbiome regulation, regeneration and evolution. By implementing state of the art techniques including single-cell RNA sequencing, shotgun metagenomics, spatial transcriptomics techniques, we will determine the molecular networks that are responsible for a population of cells to communicate among them, resulting in the generation of functional diversity at the population cell level. The outcome of this research would provide novel insights in determining the fundamental mechanisms that are responsible for a group of cells to execute complex cellular behaviors that are involved in metastasis, cell dormancy, chemoresistance, inflammation, regeneration and evolution.