Department Environmental Microbiology
PriME - Principles of microbial ecosystems
Microbial communities play many important roles on our planet. For example, microbial communities in the ocean degrade organic material and close the global cycles of the elements. Microbial communities in the soil return nutrients to a form that can be taken up by plants and microbial communities in our gut have a profound impact on our health and disease. All these microbial communities consist of many different species, which can interact with each other in numerous ways. The ecosystem functions that the community as a whole performs are a consequence of these interactions. To better understand the underlying natural processes and control the activities of microbial communities in biotechnological applications, we need to dissect how microbial communities work, i.e., how microbes interact with each other and how these interactions lead to the functions that we observe at the ecosystem level.
In collaboration with ten other research groups based in the Europe and the US, we work towards the goal of better understanding how different microbial species work together to break down biomass. A collection of marine bacterial species that together degrade organic material in the ocean, such as chitin and alginate, serves as a uniting model system. The collaboration brings together microbiologists, physicists, engineers, biogeochemists and theoretical ecologists with the shared goal to better understand the principles of microbial ecosystems and their impact on the global carbon cycle.
Project duration
2017 - 2025