Karsten Zengler Research Group

The lab uses community systems biology to study microbe–microbe and microbe–host interactions with combined experimental and computational approaches. Researchers apply multi-omics, metatranscriptomics, and metatranslatomics to identify mechanisms of competition between pathogens and resident microbiota. The group builds genome-scale metabolic and machine-learning models to predict competition, substrate preferences, and outcomes of microbiome-directed interventions. Experimental pipelines include synthetic microbial communities, skin microbiome transplants, and quantitative omics to design reproducible manipulations of microbial environments.