Our Research

The Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology (MPI-TM) strives for an integrated understanding of microbe-environment interactions at all scales: from protein and RNA structure and function to metabolic and genetic networks, cellular architecture and organization, to the level of microbial communities and host-microbe interactions.

More recently, research at the Institute has focused on microbial metabolism of the greenhouse gases CO2 and methane, microbial networks of communication and regulation, the spatial and temporal organization of microbial cells, and the synthesis of bioactive microbial products and their function in host-microbe interactions.

While the main focus of the Institute is still to gain a fundamental molecular-mechanistic understanding of microbial functions across all scales, this knowledge is increasingly being used to explore new microbiology-based solutions with systems and synthetic biology to address global challenges. Such solutions include new biosensors, RNA-based therapeutic molecules, designer natural products with enhanced antibiotic activity, new metalloproteins, and artificial chloroplasts for more efficient CO2 fixation.

 

 

 

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