THE RATZKE LAB...

...aims to understand, predict, and engineer microbial communities by integrating laboratory experiments with mathematical modeling. Microbes are ubiquitous, including within and on our bodies, where they play a crucial role in health and well-being. Despite their significance, much remains unknown about how these communities function. Our lab focuses on uncovering the fundamental principles that govern microbial interactions and their impact on community structure and function. By deepening this understanding, we aim to design and optimize microbial communities for medical and biotechnological applications.

THE RATZKE LAB...

NEWS

February, 2025: Welcome Sunaina and Anna. Sunaina and Anna joined our lab as PhD students. Sunaina aims to reconstruct microbial interaction networks in complex communities and Anna will develop methods to investigate microbes in very high-throughput.

July, 2024: Or got an Innovation Grant of the University of Tübingen, to push our science towards founding a startup and get rich and famous.

May, 2024: Welcome Qiyun! Qiyun joined us as a postdoc to find out how unculturable these "unculturable bacteria" really are.

news archive

RECENT SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

C. Ratzke*, J. Barrere*, J. Gore
"Strength of species interactions determines biodiversity and stability in microbial communities"
Nature Ecology and Evolution 4, 376–383 (2020)

D. Amor, C. Ratzke, J. Gore
"Transient invaders can induce shifts between alternative stable states of microbial communities"
Science Advances, Vol. 6, no. 8 (2020)

C. Ratzke*, J.Denk*, J.Gore
"Ecological suicide in microbes"
Nature Ecology and Evolution 2, 867–872 (2018)

C. Ratzke, J. Gore
“Modifying and reacting to the environmental pH can drive bacterial interactions”
PLOS Biology 16(3): e2004248 (2018)

C. Ratzke, J.Gore
“Self-organized patchiness facilitates survival in a cooperatively growing Bacillus subtilis population”
Nature Microbiology, Article number: 16022 (2016)