Skip to main content
E. coli bacteria found in intestine of warm-blooded organism - 3D render
immimagery - stock.adobe.com

Environmental Health Center Comparative Microbiome Analysis

We are living in a microbial world … It is our aim to use the enormous functional power of microbiomes to improve planetary health.

We are living in a microbial world … It is our aim to use the enormous functional power of microbiomes to improve planetary health.

About our Research

The human microbiome is a key component for our health. It is strongly influenced by environmental microbiota, which interact with the microbiome of barrier organs like skin or respiratory system. As a consequence, the reduced microbial diversity in the environment, resulting from climate- and global change, strongly impacts human – environment interactions, resulting in an increase in environmental diseases and infections. According to the planetary health concept the prevention of such diseases requires strategies which increase biodiversity in the environment.

We identify key microbiota from the environment, which trigger our health, develop strategies to promote the abundance of those microbiota in urban and indoor environments and analyze consequences for our health.

Our Research Groups

3D Rendering of Bacteria in Human Intestine
Alpha Tauri 3D - stock.adobe.com

Human Microbiomes

We investigate the interactions of environmental- and human microbiomes of barrier organs including respiratory system and skin and define keystone species which determine human health

View Research Group
Escherichia coli
Siarhei - stock.adobe.com

Environmental Microbiomes

We study how climate- and global change impacts the environmental microbiome and develop mitigation strategies to increase microbial diversity for the prevention of human health.

View Research Group

Scientists at COMI

Catherine Kamau

PhD student

Michaela Blank

Laboratory Assistant -- Funded by the BMBF (www.bonares.de; project: µPlastic)

Gudrun Hufnagel

Laboratory Assistant -- Partly funded by the German Center for Lung Research (www.dzl.de)

Publications

Read more

2024 Scientific Article in Environment International

Schneider, E. ; Amar, Y. ; Butter, K. ; Steiger, K. ; Musiol, S. ; Garcia-Käufer, M. ; Hölge, I.M. ; Schnautz, B. ; Gschwendtner, S. ; Ghirardo, A. ; Gminski, R. ; Eberlein, B. ; Esser-von Bieren, J. ; Biedermann, T. ; Haak, S. ; Ohlmeyer, M. ; Schmidt-Weber, C.B. ; Eyerich, S. ; Alessandrini, F.

Pinewood VOC emissions protect from oxazolone-induced inflammation and dysbiosis in a mouse model of atopic dermatitis.

2024 Scientific Article in Basic and Applied Ecology

Eisenhauer, N. ; Mueller, K. ; Ebeling, A. ; Gleixner, G. ; Huang, Y. ; Madaj, A. ; Roscher, C. ; Weigelt, A. ; Bahn, M. ; Bonkowski, M. ; Brose, U. ; Cesarz, S. ; Feilhauer, H. ; Guimaraes-Steinicke, C. ; Heintz-Buschart, A. ; Hines, J. ; Lange, M. ; Meyer, S.T. ; Mohanbabu, N. ; Mommer, L. ; Neuhauser, S. ; Oelmann, Y. ; Rahmanian, S. ; Sasaki, T. ; Scheu, S. ; Schielzeth, H. ; Schmid, B. ; Schloter, M. ; Schulz, S. ; Unsicker, S.B. ; Vogel, C. ; Weisser, W.W. ; Isbell, F.

The multiple-mechanisms hypothesis of biodiversity-stability relationships.

2024 Scientific Article in Mobile DNA

Peona, V. ; Martelossi, J. ; Almojil, D. ; Bocharkina, J. ; Brännström, I. ; Brown, M. ; Cang, A. ; Carrasco-Valenzuela, T. ; deVries, J.H. ; Doellman, M. ; Elsner, D. ; Espíndola-Hernández, P. ; Montoya, G.F. ; Gaspar, B. ; Zagorski, D. ; Hałakuc, P. ; Ivanovska, B. ; Laumer, C. ; Lehmann, R. ; Boštjančić, L.L. ; Mashoodh, R. ; Mazzoleni, S. ; Mouton, A. ; Nilsson, M.A. ; Pei, Y. ; Potente, G. ; Provataris, P. ; Pardos-Blas, J.R. ; Raut, R. ; Sbaffi, T. ; Schwarz, F. ; Stapley, J. ; Stevens, L. ; Sultana, N. ; Symonova, R. ; Tahami, M.S. ; Urzì, A. ; Yang, H. ; Yusuf, A. ; Pecoraro, C. ; Suh, A.

Teaching transposon classification as a means to crowd source the curation of repeat annotation - a tardigrade perspective.

Contact

Barbara Stempfhuber

Dr. Barbara Stempfhuber

Scientific Assistant

43a / 115