Research Areas:

The research of Thomas Böttcher focuses on the chemistry of microbial interactions and chemical strategies for modulating microbial growth, virulence, and coordinated behaviours such as swarming motility or biofilm formation. He and his research group are interested in elucidating the chemical structure of metabolites that mediate and control microbe-microbe, microbe-host and microbe-phage interactions and exploit these compounds by synthetic chemistry as species-specific antibiotics and anti-infectives. Furthermore, they develop chemical probes to understand virulence-related functions of human pathogens and develop customized inhibitors of pathogenesis traits. Their goal is to improve the understanding of chemical interactions of microbes and to create chemical tools for precision interventions in complex microbiomes with the ultimate vision of chemical microbiome engineering.

“With our research we will expand the basic understanding of the chemical interactions in the human microbiome and create chemical strategies for the targeted control of microbial pathogens."