VW Research Group Experimental Ecology and Evolution

The group moved to the University of Osnabrück. However, several of our projects are still running at the MPI-CE.
Microorganisms are well known to readily enter into synergistic metabolic interactions with both other micro- and macroorganisms. The molecular prerequisites and selective conditions that favour the evolution of such cooperative interactions, however, remain poorly understood.
Hence, the main goal of our research is to answer the question: Why do organisms cooperate with each other? For this, we use the cooperative exchange of essential metabolites amongst two or more bacterial strains as an experimentally tractable model. By rigorously and systematically studying the molecular and ecological causes as well as the physiological and evolutionary consequences of a cooperative lifestyle, we aim at contributing to the development of a solid, empirically-based framework that allows to mechanistically predict the evolution of cooperative behaviours within microbial communities.
We address this fascinating research question by combining the methodological power of laboratory-based experiments with recent advances in the fields of molecular microbiology and synthetic biology. First, specific ecological interactions between different microorganisms are synthetically engineered. The rationale of this design is based on a priori knowledge on the essential features of the focal interaction and its genetic implementation is guided by computational approaches. Second, theoretical models are being developed that provide testable hypotheses, which are then experimentally verified by exposing precisely defined microbial consortia to certain environmental conditions or selection pressures. These experiments are either performed on ecological time-scales, to monitor fitness-related shifts in the frequency distributions of the interacting populations, or in long-term evolution experiments, during which new genotypes arise by mutation and selection. Finally, post-hoc analyses are performed to study the underlying processes on a phenotypic, a physiological, and a genetic level. This laboratory-based approach is complemented by the study of natural microbial populations, in which we verify the general applicability of our findings.
Current research themes in our group are:
- Ecology and evolution of cooperative cross-feeding interactions
- Coevolutionary dynamics within microbial communities
- Genomic and physiological consequences of a synergistic coevolution
- Host-symbiont interactions
- Bacterial multicellularity

Lab news

13.06.2016 Glen successfully defends his PhD thesis, which is entitled "The evolution of metabolic dependency in bacteria“. Congratulations Glen! He now moves to Switzerland, to join the group of Martin Ackermann at the ETH Zürich.

07.04.2016 Silvio successfully defends his PhD thesis, which is entitled "Evolutionary systems biology of bacterial metabolic adaptation". Congratulations Silvio! He now continues his academic career as a post doc at the Medical Systems Biology Group of Prof. Christoph Kaleta at CAU, Kiel.
30.03.2016 Silvio's paper titled "Metabolic network architecture and carbon source determine metabolite production costs" has been accepted for publication at the FEBS Journal. Congrats Silvio!

16.03.2016 Daniel wins one of the best poster awards at the Annual Conference 2016 of the Association of General and Applied Microbiology (VAAM) held in Jena. Congrats Daniel!
February 2016. Our work on intercellular cross-feeding via nanotubes and on adaptive gene loss were featured in Max Planck Research and in a podcast by detektor.fm.
February 2016. Muhammad starts his PhD thesis funded by the International Max Planck Research School. Congrats Muhammad!
February 2016. Ariane finishes her Masters thesis titled " Generation of auxotrophic Bacillus subtilis strains". Congratualtions Ariane!

10.01.2016 Ramya Ganesan joins our group for a 6 month internship. Welcome Ramya!

01.10.2015 Esther Voigt joins our group as a new master's student.
Welcome Esther!

01.09.2015 Samir Giri joins our lab as a new PhD student. Welcome Samir!
16.08.2015 John Carey highlights two of our publications in a PNAS News Feature
on the evolution of symbiotic interactions (link).

01.04.2015 Ghada Yousif joins the EEE group as a new DAAD-funded PhD
student. Ghada will work on metabolic cross-feeding within soil
microbial communities. Welcome Ghada!

02.03.2015 Muhammad Atiqur Rahman from the University of Tampere
(Finland) joined our lab as a new master student.
Welcome Muhammad!
30.01.2015 Glen's and Silvio's paper on the effects of epistasis and plastiticty of
auxotrophy-causing mutations has been accepted at Evolution (article).

08.01.2015 Breaking news: Samay's, Shraddha's, and Lisa's paper on the
intercellular communication of bacteria via nanotubes has been
acccepted for publication in Nature Communications
(article) (press release)(Highlight in Nature).

25.09.2014 Samay successfully defends his excellent doctoral thesis "Ecological mechanisms that stabilize cooperative cross-feeding in bacteria". Congratulations Samay! He now moves on to work with Greg Velicer's group at ETH Zurich.

Christian Kost and Martin Ackermann organize a symposium on the upcoming ESEB meeting in Lausanne on the levels of selection in microbial systems (more).

15.10.2014 Elena Inguglia joins the lab as a new master student. Welcome Elena!

13.10.2014 Ariane Zander joins the lab as a new master Student. Welcome Ariane!

1.11.2012 Shraddha Shitut joins our group as a new PhD student. Welcome
Shraddha!

1.10.2012 Anne successfully defends her excellent diploma thesis "Metabolic costs of
copy number, size, and GC-content of plasmids as model endosymbionts".
Congratulations Anne!
Fortunately, we could convince Anne to stay a little longer and do her
PhD in our group.

1.07.2012 Silvio Waschina joins the lab as a new PhD student that is cosupervised
by Christoph Kaleta and Christian Kost. Welcome back Silvio!
9.01.2012 Silvio successfully defends his excellent diploma thesis, which is entitled "Theoretical design
and experimental verification of amino acid overproducing strains of Escherichia coli using
CASOP GS". Congratulations Silvio!

1.11.2011 The lab welcomes Daniel Preußger, who is joining us as a master
student. Welcome Daniel!

1.09.2011 Glen D'Souza joins the lab as a new PhD student. Welcome Glen!
30.08.2011 Tobias Weise hands in his bachelor's thesis, which is entitled: 'Aufbau und Inbetriebnahme
einer Chemostaten-Anlage zur Kokultivierung mutualistischer Bakterienstaemme'.
Congratulations Tobias! Unfortunately Tobias leaves us to commence the Master's program
biotechnology at the FH Jena.

Martin Kaltenpoth and Christian Kost coorganize a symposium on "Mutualistic interactions: causes and consequences" at the ESEB conference 2011 in Tuebingen (more...)
18.05.2011 Sandra Scholz hands in her diploma thesis, which is entitled 'Establishing of a flexible labeling
strategy for soil bacteria with fluorescent proteins'. Congratulations Sandra! She will now join
Axel Mithoefer's group for a PhD.

1.04.2011 Christian Kost becomes a faculty member of the International Max
Planck Research School (IMPRS) in Jena.

28.02.2011 Tobias Weise and Silvio Waschina join the lab as a bachelor
and a diploma student respectively.
9.01.2011 The lab farewells Ingrid. It was great having you here.

01.11.2010 Anne-Kathrin Dietel joins the lab as a new master student. Welcome Anne!

15.09.2010 Ingrid Teich does an internship with us.
13.07.2010 Felix Bertels successfully defends his diploma thesis at the University of Applied Sciences.
Congratulations Felix!

08.07.2009 Our work is supported by an 'Advanced Postdoctoral
Fellowship' of the VolkswagenStiftung.

24.11.2009 The lab welcomes Sandra Scholz as a new diploma student.

05.11.2009 Christian Kost co-authors a paper on the evolution of bet-hedging (more...).

01.11.2009 Samay Pande joins the lab as a new JSMC-funded PhD student.
Welcome Samay!