W. Florian Fricke, PhD

• Biology Diploma, 2000, University of Göttingen, Germany
• Ph.D., 2005, Microbiology, University of Göttingen, Germany
• Post-doctoral Fellow, 2006, The Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR), Rockville, MD
• Research Associate, 2009, Institute for Genome Sciences, Dept. Microbiology & Immunology, University of Maryland School of Medicine
• Assistant Professor, 2010, Institute for Genome Sciences, Dept. Microbiology & Immunology, University of Maryland School of Medicine
• Affiliate Professor, 2014, Institute for Genome Sciences, Dept. Microbiology & Immunology, University of Maryland School of Medicine
• Professor, 2014, Institute for Nutritional Sciences, Dept. of Microbiome Research & Applied Bioinformatics, University of Hohenheim, Stuttgart, Germany

Dr. W. Florian Fricke is Professor for Microbiome Research and Applied Bioinformatics at the University of Hohenheim in Stuttgart, Germany, as well as Affiliate Professor at the Institute for Genome Sciences at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, Baltimore, USA. He received his Ph.D. at the University of Göttingen, Germany, and was a postdoctoral fellow at The Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR), Rockville, Maryland, USA.

Before accepting his current position in 2014, Dr. Fricke was Assistant Professor at the Dept. of Microbiology and Immunology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, Baltimore, USA. He is a Senior Editor for the Gastrointestinal Section of the journal Microbiome (www.microbiomejournal.com).

Dr. Fricke's group studies the ecological, immunological and metabolic principles that shape the composition and function of the human microbiota and its role for health and disease. His group is particularly interested in studying the human microbiome at the level of individual microbial strains, e.g. by using fecal microbiota transplantation as a model for microbiome assembly, persistence, competition, and therapeutic modulation.

Podlesny D, Durdevic M, Paramsothy S, Kaakoush NO, Högenauer C, Gorkiewicz G, Walter J, Fricke WF. 2022. Identification of clinical and ecological determinants of strain engraftment after fecal microbiota transplantation using metagenomics. Cell Rep Med. 3(8):100711. doi: 10.1016/j.xcrm.2022.100711

Fricke WF, Ravel J. 2022. More data needed on neonatal microbiome seeding. Microbiome. 10(1):88. doi: 10.1186/s40168-022-01282-3.

Podlesny D, Arze C, Dörner E, Verma S, Dutta S, Walter J, Fricke WF. 2022. Metagenomic strain detection with SameStr: identification of a persisting core gut microbiota transferable by fecal transplantation. Microbiome. 10(1):53. doi: 10.1186/s40168-022-01251-w.

Fricke WF, Ravel J. 2021. Microbiome or no microbiome: are we looking at the prenatal environment through the right lens? Microbiome. 9(1):9. doi: 10.1186/s40168-020-00947-1.

Fricker AM, Podlesny D, Fricke WF. 2019. What is new and relevant for sequencing-based microbiome research? A mini-review. J Adv Res. 19:105-112. doi: 10.1016/j.jare.2019.03.006.

Wurm P, Dörner E, Kremer C, Spranger J, Maddox C, Halwachs B, Harrison U, Blanchard T, Haas R, Högenauer C, Gorkiewicz G, Fricke WF. 2018. Qualitative and Quantitative DNA- and RNA-Based Analysis of the Bacterial Stomach Microbiota in Humans, Mice, and Gerbils. mSystems. 3(6):e00262-18. doi: 10.1128/mSystems.00262-18.

Langille MGI, Ravel J, Fricke WF. 2018. "Available upon request": not good enough for microbiome data! Microbiome. 6(1):8. doi: 10.1186/s40168-017-0394-z.