Designed microbial solutions

Breathing life
into dead soil

Deep Root designs microbial solutions that live inside plants, biofortifying and empowering them to root, survive, and green over the harshest, most degraded ground on earth.

Our approach

We work with
native plants

The species that already belong to a landscape are the ones that can heal it. We design the microbes that live within them, so native plants can reclaim the ground they came from.

Every native landscape sets its own hard problem

Drylands
Heat · Drought

Drylands

Deep-rooted shrubs, bunchgrasses, and succulents endure here on a fraction of the water other plants need. Thin, unstable soils and relentless heat give young roots almost nothing to hold onto.

Wetlands
Flood · Low oxygen

Wetlands

Sedges, rushes, and reeds root in saturated ground along the water's edge. They have to survive flooding, shifting water levels, and soils starved of oxygen.

Grasslands
Fire · Grazing

Grasslands

Deep-rooted perennial grasses and wildflowers build some of the richest soils on the planet. Drought, fire, and heavy grazing constantly test what can hold its ground.

Coastal & saline
Salt · Erosion

Coastal & saline

Salt-tolerant grasses and halophytes anchor shifting dunes and salt-laden soils. Constant salt, wind, and erosion make them vital for protecting coastlines and reclaiming saline farmland.

The ground we start with

Where nothing grows

Abandoned mines, tailings, and industrial sites leave behind ground that defeats conventional revegetation. Seed it, and it fails, the soil is too toxic, too acidic, too dead to hold a root.

Heavy metals

Lead, arsenic, and other metals that poison germinating seedlings before they establish.

Acidic drainage

Low-pH runoff from mine waste that strips nutrients and burns young roots.

No organic matter

Bare mineral spoil with none of the microbial life healthy soil depends on.

Erosion & drought

Compacted, exposed surfaces that shed water and wash away before cover takes hold.

The platform

Life, from the inside

Our microbial solutions live within plant tissue. We design them to give a plant what it needs to survive ground that would otherwise kill it, working from inside the plant, where it counts.

01 / Root

Roots that
take hold

Our microbes drive vigorous root growth, so seedlings anchor and reach moisture in loose, hostile spoil.

02 / Survive

Stress
tolerance

They buffer the plant against metal load, drought, and acidity, the stresses that normally stop revegetation cold.

03 / Stay

Staying
power

Living inside the plant, the microbe travels and persists with it, protection that stays put instead of washing away.

Why inside the plant? Surface treatments and soil amendments wash out, break down, and have to be re-applied. Our microbes establish with the plant and work from within its tissue, a durable, self-renewing partnership rather than a one-time input.

The outcome we build toward

Living cover, rebuilt from the roots up

Where we work

Revegetation & remediation

We partner on sites where standard revegetation stalls, stabilizing ground, rebuilding soil, and putting durable living cover back on degraded land.

Who we are

Built on hard science and a harder problem

Deep Root Biolabs is a spinout of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, based in Baltimore, Maryland. We pair a validated microbial platform with real-world environmental deployment credentials.

Meet the team

John Sittmann, PhD

John Sittmann, PhD

Co-Founder · CEO
Tom Curtis, PhD

Tom Curtis, PhD

Co-Founder · CTO
Renee Hodges

Renee Hodges

Business Development · Strategy Advisor
Lambros Tassoulas, PhD

Lambros Tassoulas, PhD

Plant Science Lead
Darby Sweeney, PhD

Darby Sweeney, PhD

Project Manager
Start a project

Have ground that
won't grow?

Tell us about your site. We'll tell you straight whether our platform is a fit, and what a demonstration would look like.

Prefer email? info@deeprootbio.com