Dr. Jakob Zimmermann

Principal Investigator

BHH

MEM F811

Address

Murtenstrasse 35

ZIP code and town

CH-3008 Bern

Contact

Tel. +41 31 632 98 42
​​​​​​​jakob.zimmermannextra@unibe.ch​​​​​​​

Research Interests

  • host-microbiota mutualism
  • intestinal inflammation / IBD
  • genetically engineered bacteria
  • flow cytometry

Recently, our group was able to demonstrate that bacterial metabolites from the maternal intestinal microbiota direct the development of the offspring’s innate immune system (Gomez de Agüero, Ganal-Vonarburg et al., Science, 2016). However, it remains elusive how this early microbial priming impacts on an individual’s later life physiology and disease susceptibility. In this project, we aim to identify the pervasive consequences of maternal microbial priming on the offspring’s host-microbiota mutualism.

Our group could previously elucidate the dynamics of IgA responses using the auxotrophic E. coli strain HA107 that can be grown in vitro but does not persist in vivo because it lacks critical enzymes for cell wall synthesis (Hapfelmeier et al., Science, 2010). In this project, I aim to develop novel auxotrophic bacterial strains to shed light on the immunological and metabolic host responses to diverse bacteria in a defined gnotobiotic colonization model.

During my PhD I developed a novel flow cytometric approach to interrogate the intestinal microbiota that relies on high sensitivity measurement of bacterial DNA content and light scattering characteristics in collaboration with the environmental research center Leipzig (Zimmermann, Hübschmann et al., Eur J Immunol, 2016). In this project we aim to further develop this approach to enable the sorting of live bacteria in the context of defined model floras such as the sDMDMm2 (stable defined moderately diverse mouse microbiota - Brugiroux et al., Nature Microbiology, 2016 and Uchimura et al., Genome Announcements, 2016)