The Molecular Microbiology research group led by Matthias Ullrich is studying molecular interactions between bacteria and terrestrial plants, bacteria and marine diatoms, as well as bacteria and artificial surfaces. Bacterial gene expression is analyzed at the promoter, mRNA, and protein level in dependence of the interactions and temperature changes. The molecular model organisms are gram-negative bacteria such as Pseudomonas syringae, Erwinia amylovora, Pseudomonas putida, Marinobacter adhaerens, as well as the diatom, Thallasiosira weißflogii, and terrestrial crop plants such as soybean, apple, Arabidopsis, and tobacco. Research of this laboratory is done in close collaboration with scientists from Jacobs University (Muskhelishvili, Jeltsch, Winterhalter, Glöckner), from the MPI for Marine Microbiology, from the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar Research, from the Federal Biological Agency Dossenheim, and from the biotech company, Bio-Gate AG.