News 2019

Finally, after a long time, the book entitled “Chitin and Chitosan: Properties and Applications” has been released in the Wiley Series in “Renewable Resources”.
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Today, the 45th Newsletter of the European Chitin Society - EUCHIS has appeared, edited by EUCHIS Secretary Prof. em. Martin Peter. It contains important information about the forthcoming 14th EUCHIS conference which will be organised in conjunction with the annual meeting of the Russian Chitin Society in Kazan, from September 06 to 10, 2020.
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Today, the third paper from Hellen Barbosa’s half year doctoral sandwich stay with us in 2017 under the direct supervision of Dr. Maha Attjioui has been accepted for publication in the International Journal of Biological Macromolecules.
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Today, a new project of our Norwegian collaboration partner, Dr. Volha ‘Olga’ Shapaval from the Norwegian University of Life Sciences in Ås, has been granted by the Norwegian Research Council.
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Our Master candidate Michael Sulk has continued our successful collaboration with the team of Dr. Shane O'Connell and Dr. Oscar Goñi at Shannon Applied Biotechnology Centre (Shannon ABC) in Tralee, Ireland.
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Each year around this time, the Rector of our university invites all those who received their doctorates during the past year with the highest possible mark - “summa cum laude” - to say the thanks of the university for excellent work.
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It is already a tradition that Nikolaus visits us in the night from December 5 to 6, to bring his chocolate-self to each of our team members, as a token of his appreciation of our efforts and successes during the past year. Seems like we pleased him again!
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The Dutch Carbohydrate Competence Center CCC celebrated its ‘bronze’ jubilee of 12.5 years, and at the same time thanked Prof. Lubbert Dijkhuizen from Groningen University who is about to step down as its Head upon his retirement.
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Finally, another paper of Dr. Jasper Wattjes and Dr. Anna Niehues has been accepted for publication in the renowned international journal Carbohydrate Polymers.
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German universities praise themselves for following the principles of Humboldt who emphasized the unity of research and teaching. But unfortunately, good teaching brings little reputation, much less than good research. Universities are ranked according to their research output in terms of publications. Shouldn’t we rather be judged based on the success of our students?
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The current issue of the alumni magazine of the University of Münster features an article on Dr. Roberta Paulert, who received her Dr. rer. nat. from our university in 2010 and who is now professor for plant biotechnology at the University of Parana in Palotina, Brazil.
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Our doctoral candidate Naivy Nava attended this year’s International Plant Protection Congress in India, organised at ICRISAT, the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics.
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Today, Dr. Maida Romera-Branchat organised the first Plant Science Graduate Student Day - PSGSD 2019 - for the students and doctoral candidates of plant-related research groups of the Institute for Biology and Biotechnology of Plants IBBP and of the Institute for Evolution and Biodiversity IEB of the Faculty of Biology of our university.
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Three of our doctoral candidates attended this year’s International Polysaccharides Conference in Portugal, organised by the European Polysaccharide Network of Excellence EPNOE in conjunction with the Cellulose and Renewable Division of the American Chemical Society (ACS) and the Cellulose Society of Japan (CSJ).
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Another occasion for sparkling wine: Today, Philipp Lemke became Dr. Philipp Lemke. After having successfully defended his doctoral thesis earlier this week, Philipp was awarded the title of Dr. rer. nat., the German equivalent of a PhD in Natural Sciences, by the Faculty of Biology of our University.
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Today, Lena Jünemann successfully defended her MSc thesis on synergistic effects in the antifungal activities of chitosans and commercial fungicides, supported by her first and second referees, Prof. Bruno Moerschbacher and Prof. Dr. Prüfer, from our institute.
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Today, Philipp Lemke successfully defended his PhD thesis, supported by his first and second referees, Prof. Bruno Moerschbacher and Prof. Dirk Prüfer, from our institute, as well as his third doctoral committee member, Dr. Andreas Kortekamp, from the State Education and Research Center of Viticulture, Horticulture and Rural Development (DLR) Rheinpfalz, our collaborator in the smartBioS project.
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Last week in “Lokalzeit Münsterland”, WDR broadcasted a video report on Evorion Biotechnologies, the highly successful start-up company of Hans Kleine-Brüggeney, Robert Weingarten und Dr. Sebastian Bühren.
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Only a few months back, the global report on biodiversity of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) of the United Nations identified agriculture as the main culprit for the unprecedented mass extinction we are currently witnessing. And now, the Special Report on Climate Change and Land (SRCCL) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) of the United Nations again points at agriculture as the main cause for global climate change.
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Last year, Dr. Natalia Calvo visited us for a short post-doctoral research stay in our lab, to learn with Dr. Sruthi Sreekumar how to produce and characterise chitosan-coated nano-capsules for the delivery of hydrophobic antifungal azole drugs for the treatment of vaginal Candida infections.
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This month, Anna started working at the Radboud University Medical Center (Radboudumc) in a collaboration between the Center for Molecular and Biomolecular Informatics, headed by Prof. Peter-Bram 't Hoen, and the Translational Metabolic Laboratory, lead by Prof. Alain van Gool.
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After a gap of several months, we can finally again report on the acceptance of a manuscript for publication. It is the work of Dr. Natalia Calvo and Dr. Sruthi Sreekumar, with their Argentinian co-workers Laura Svetaz, María Lamas, and Dario Leonardi as well as their German co-worker Bruno Moerschbacher.
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Last week, Prof. Gurvan Michel, who had been our guest as a Humboldt fellow for one year, gave his farewell coffee and cake - joined by his wife Corinne and his famous son, Judikael. He found very nice words of thanks for us. And this morning, he gave his farewell seminar in our lab meeting.
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For the past two years, Dr. KRK Reddy has been busy preparing his new coup - and it’s a brilliant coup!
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At the end of June, the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation had its annual meeting which was special this year because of the 250th birthday anniversary of Alexander von Humboldt. As a fellow of the foundation, our guest Prof. Gurvan Michel was invited and joint the celebration.
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This Friday, Sven Basa received his degree certificates, pronouncing him a “Dr. rer. nat.” His family had come from Southern Germany to celebrate with him and of course, the whole group came to hood him.
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This week, the German partners of the Indo-German smartBioS project, financially supported by the Bioeconomy International programme of BMBF, met in Neustadt an der Weinstraße in Southern Germany, on the premises of DLR, the State Education and Research Center of Viticulture, Horticulture and Rural Development of the state of Rhineland Palatinate.
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To say it up front: We do not want to adorn ourselves with borrowed plumes. But we are happy with Prof. Gurvan Michel - who thanks to the Bessel award given to him by the Alexander von Humboldt foundation is currently a member of our group - that his paper on an ulvan degradation locus in the genome of the marine bacterium Formosa agariphila has been accepted for publication in Nature Biological Chemistry.
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This week, we had our yearly mini-symposium of the group, with the Bex-Biotech team as our guests. It had been organized by Rita Weyer, Max Linhorst, and Margareta Hellmann, supported as always by Cordula Kurth. For the first time, the mini-symposium was held at an institute of one of our alumni, Dr. Anne Vortkamp.
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Today, we received the formal granting letter from BMBF indicating that Dr. Ratna Singh’s project on the in silico development of chitin synthase and chitin deacetylase inhibitors has been approved for funding by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research BMBF.
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Today, a high-ranking delegation from the Chinese Shandong province visited us to explore possibilities of future collaborations and exchange.
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Today, Germany’s federal Minister for research and education, Anja Karliczek, published her decision that the new research institute for battery production will be established in Münster, with 500 million Euro of support from the federal government matched by 200 million Euro from the land North-Rhine Westphalia.
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Today, Nilas Hielscher successfully defended his MSc thesis on optimizing bioassays for plant biostimulants, supported by his first and second referees, Bruno Moerschbacher and Dr. Rebecca Melcher from the start-up company Bex-Biotech.
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This week, the 9th International Colloids Conference was held in Sitges near Barcelona, Spain. The conference focused on advanced functional biopolymers and their soft nanosystems. Dr. Sruthi Sreekumar attended this conference, financially supported by the “Gleichstellungsfond” of the Faculty of Biology.
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Today, Prof. Martin Peter - founding member, former President and current Secretary of the European Chitin Society EUCHIS, former professor at the University of Potsdam and one of the globally leading chitosan experts - visited us and gave a seminar in our lab meeting.
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Today, the partners of the nanoControl project financially supported by the ZIM program (Zentrales Innovationsprogramm Mittelstand) of the Federal Ministry for Economy and Energy (BMWi) met in Münster for the half annual consortium meeting, to discuss the results obtained so far, and the plans for the next six months.
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Today, Sven Basa successfully defended his PhD thesis, supported by his first and second referees, Prof. Bruno Moerschbacher and Prof. Andreas Hensel, from the Institute for Pharmaceutical Biology and Phytochemistry, as well as his third doctoral committee member, Prof. Jens Leker, from the Institute of Business Administration, the latter two from the Faculty of Chemistry and Pharmacy of our University.
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Today, Mounashree has started her PhD project under the direct supervision of Dr. Ratna Singh, our bioinformatician.
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The Carbohydrate Bioengineering Meeting - 13 CBM 2019 - was held this week in Toulouse, France, and our two doctoral candidates Eva Regel and Martin Bonin as well as our Master candidate Max Evers actively participated with three posters.
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The International Symposium on Green Chemistry - ISGC 2019 - was held this week in La Rochelle, France, and our post-doctoral researcher Anna Niehues as well as our doctoral candidate Max Linhorst actively participated.
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My generation grew up with the notion that energy is the most limiting resource on which humanity depends. Perhaps the most captivating board game we played as children was “Öl für uns alle” in which we drilled oil wells, build oil pipelines, bought oil tankers, sold crude oil to refineries, feared fires in our oil facilities, and despaired about exploding transport costs when the Suez canal was closed because of a war in the Near East.
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To biologists, it comes as no surprise. Nature is in distress. One million species (and this is not including bacteria and fungi!), an estimated one eighth of all species existing, are threatened by extinction, in just a few decades.
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This week, the consortium of our European Research Area - Industrial Biotechnology (ERA-IB) project “funCHI - Fungal Chitosans from Fermentation Mycelia for Plant Biostimulants” met at the premises of our German industrial partner WeissBioTech in Zwingenberg near Darmstadt.
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Today, Dr. Sarah Prexler’s manuscript, co-authored by her Master student Martin Frassek and her supervisors Prof. Bruno Moerschbacher and Dr. Mareike Dirks-Hofmeister, on mutational studies concerning the monophenolase activity of dandelion polyphenol oxidases was finally accepted for publication in the highly reputed journal “Angewandte Chemie”!
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Today, Christoph Engwer from the ex-Goycoolea group successfully defended his PhD thesis, supported by his first and second referees, Prof. Francisco Goycoolea, now at the University of Leeds in UK, and Prof. Bruno Moerschbacher, as well as his third, external doctoral committee member, Prof. Ioannis Chronakis from Technical University of Denmark in Copenhagen.
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This week, Prof. Gurvan Michel, CNRS research director at the Laboratoire Biologique de Roscoff in Britanny, France, and currently guest professor at our Institute in Münster, received the certificate for the award of the Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Prize of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, at the annual AvH Research Awards Winners Symposium held in Bamberg.
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Today, Marina Vortmann successfully defended her PhD thesis, supported by her first and second referees, Prof. Bruno Moerschbacher and Prof. Bodo Philipp, and her third, external doctoral committee member, Prof. Volker Wendisch from the University of Bielefeld.
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Today, our former doctoral researcher Roberta Paulert visited us from her sabbatical in Pisa, Italy.
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Today, the manuscript of David Gercke and Eva Regel on engineering ‘our’ chitosanase to generate fully deacetylated chitosan tetramer, GlcN4, when hydrolyzing polyglucosamine was accepted for publication in the Journal of Biological Engineering.
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This month, Lisanne Hameleers started her PhD project at the Rijksuniversiteit Groningen in the group of the tenure-track assistant professor Dr. Edita Jurak.
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Until last year, Prof. Francisco Goycoolea led the round table seminar on “Food Biochemistry” in our fifth semester undergraduate module Biochemistry, but with him now at Leeds University in UK, we had to come up with a replacement.
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Since last year, we are collaborating with altona Diagnostics GmbH in a new ZIM (“Zentrales Innovationsprogramm Mittelstand”) project - “nanoControl - Development of Nanoparticles as Non-Infectious Full Process Controls for in vitro Diagnostics” financially supported by the Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology (BMWi).
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This Saturday, Sabrina Stritzel, Paulina Pieloch, Nadine Dank, Jennifer Wosnik and Hendrik Schulenkorf presented the results of their project on chitosan functionalisation in a public event organised by the Hans-Böckler-Berufskolleg where they are pursuing extra-occupational training as chemical engineers.
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Our first paper this year - an excellent start! Today, one of the joint papers of Dr. Jasper Wattjes and Dr. Anna Niehues has been accepted for publication in the highly reputed Journal of the American Chemical Society - JACS.
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This week, we have a very distinguished visitor, Prof. Tamo Fukamizo, who recently retired from Kindai University in Nara, Japan, and who is currently a visiting professor at Suranaree University of Technology in Thailand.
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