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Bacterial Speed Limit

What limits bacterial investment in motility? A team led by Victor Sourjik has investigated this question. Their findings could help us better understand how bacterial strains adapt to different environments, such as the human gut.

MarBiNa Prize 2024 awarded to Nadiia Pozhydaieva-Weber

In her doctoral thesis at Dr. Katharina Höfer`s lab, Dr Nadiia Pozhydaieva-Weber developed a method that will make it easier to study bacteriophages (bacterial viruses) in the future.

Synthetic versus Natural

Dr Beau Dronsella and a team led by Tobias Erb have shown for the first time that a synthetic pathway in a living bacterium works more efficiently than the natural Calvin cycle. Their findings hold great potential for sustainable bioproduction.

Maik Wolfram-Schauerte receives PhD award

Dr Maik Wolfram-Schauerte has been awarded the prestigious Friedrich Hirzebruch Doctoral Prize 2025 by the German Study Foundation for his outstanding research on phage-host interaction.

Maren Nattermann appointed new research group leader

In her research group, 'Synthetic Cofactors and Orthogonal Metabolism', Dr. Maren Nattermann and her team are developing new approaches in synthetic biology for the sustainable production of chemicals.

Welcome to the Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology

Life without microorganisms is simply impossible. Microbes were the first life forms on early Earth. They evolved the ability to capture carbon dioxide and nitrogen, providing life with energy and nutrients. Microbes also invented photosynthesis, brought oxygen to the atmosphere and gave birth to multicellularity and the evolution of higher life. Microbes are more numerous and diverse than all other living organisms and there is no ecological niche that is not covered by them. They live in constant interactions with their environment, affecting health, agricultural productivity, and the climate on a global scale.

Our mission is to understand the function, communication, and interaction of microorganisms with their environment, to describe them with mathematical models, and to modify them with synthetic biological approaches.
We specifically focus on the microbial metabolism of greenhouse gases, the synthesis and function of bioactive natural compounds, cellular communication and regulation networks, as well as their spatial and temporal organization. Our research scale ranges from the atomic level up to global ecosystems.

Together with our two affiliated centers, SYNMIKRO and the Microcosm Earth Center, MPI-TM is one of Europe’s leading Institutes in the fields of Molecular and Synthetic Microbiology, currently hosting more than 300 scientists and students from more than 35 countries.