Dr. Uli Klümper is a microbial ecologist at the Institute of Hydrobiology, Technische Universität Dresden focusing on plasmid biology in complex environmental systems. His research explores how plasmids drive the spread of antimicrobial resistance by shaping gene mobility across microbial communities. His group investigates plasmid host ranges, mobilization mechanisms, and plasmid–plasmid interactions, and how these processes determine transfer dynamics under complex environmental conditions. They develop and apply molecular tools to quantify horizontal gene transfer in situ. More recently, his work expands beyond classical conjugation to study extracellular vesicles as alternative pathways for DNA transfer, opening new perspectives on how resistance genes move through complex microbiomes.