Dr. Manuel Liebeke

My Main Re­search In­terests

Meta­bol­ites serve as a mir­ror of act­ive meta­bolic path­ways and of­fer a dir­ect win­dow into the physiolo­gical state and eco­lo­gical roles of mi­croor­gan­isms. The‚Meta­bolic In­ter­ac­tions‘ lab is at the fore­front of mi­cro­bial meta­bolo­m­ics re­search, us­ing mass spec­tro­metry to un­cover novel in­sights into mi­cro­bial com­munit­ies across dif­fer­ent scales. We de­velop key meth­ods for mar­ine meta­bolo­m­ics in­volving high-res­ol­u­tion mass-spec­tro­metry ima­ging with mi­cro­scopy to re­veal the spa­tial meta­bolome and com­munity struc­ture of mi­cro­bial sys­tems, provid­ing a deeper un­der­stand­ing of mi­cro­bial-host co-meta­bol­ism and the spe­cific roles of meta­bol­ites in dif­fer­ent eco­lo­gical con­texts. High­lighted in our re­cent find­ing that sug­ars ac­cu­mu­late in the rhizo­sphere of seagrasses through meta­bolic in­ter­ac­tions with plant phen­olics. Ul­ti­mately, our vis­ion is to trans­fer spa­tial meta­bol­ite data from single cells into mul­ti­cel­lu­lar and en­vir­on­mental con­texts, lead­ing to a more com­pre­hens­ive un­der­stand­ing of mi­cro­bial eco­sys­tems.

My group de­vel­ops high-res­ol­u­tion Spa­tial Ima­ging Meth­ods for in situ meas­ure­ments of meta­bol­ites in host-mi­crobe sys­tems named spa­tial meta­bolo­m­ics. 

Research projects

Our ma­jor ap­proaches are:

• spatial metabolomics on host-microbe systems 
• Mass spectrometry Imaging on the µm scale
• correlative imaging approaches,
  • e.g. combining MALDI-MSI with FISH to map bacteria
  • 3D scanning approaches like µCT to get 3D anatomy of hosts
• environmental metabolomics
  • marine metabolomics, measure metabolites in seawater
  • tissue extracts of animals, plants and microorganisms directly sampled in the field
  • sediment porewater metabolites
• stable isotope tracer experiments
  
  • following the fate of 13C or deuterated metabolites in symbiotic systems with MS