Metabolic interactions: marine microbial communities

Microbial communities surround us, and large-scale DNA sequencing projects have given us a glimpse of their bewildering complexity by showing “who is there”. But, what are the principles that underlie the formation and stabilization of such natural communities?

An external pageinterdisciplinary teamcall_made of 10 PIs from around the world (3 from ETH) addresses these principles of microbial ecosystems by following the journey of organic matter in the ocean. The Sauer lab focuses specifically on seawater communities that break down biologically important polymers using in vitro lab experiments.

Based on concepts and experimental methods developed in our lab to  (see for example ref 2 and 3), We have already laid the groundwork with a chitin-degrading seawater community, where we identified the metabolic basis of dynamic community succession through in vitro cultivation experiments and metabolomics.