Doctoral baptism: Margareta Hellmann successfully defended her doctoral thesis

Today, Margareta Hellmann successfully defended her doctoral thesis on the “Influence of cell wall modification by chitin deacetylases in Cryptococcus neoformans on the human immune response” in front of her doctoral committee, Prof. Bruno Moerschbacher, PD Christian Gorzelanny from the Institute of Dermatology and Venerology of the University Hospital Eppendorf in Hamburg, and Prof. Alexander Weber from the Institute of Immunology at the University of Tübingen. She was supported, as usual, by the members of our research group, but – rather unusually – also by an even larger group of friends and family members who joined her defence from all over Germany. Margareta managed to convey the main results described in nine excellent publications and manuscripts in an equally excellent presentation of only just over half an hour, followed by an intense discussion first with the audience, then with her committee. Margareta’s work on a human-pathogenic fungus which has chitosan instead of chitin in its cell walls, presumably as a molecular stealth mechanism to hide from its host’s immune system, was perfectly in line with our work on similar mechanisms of plant-pathogenic fungi, but it was still a novum. And it not only required the development of new techniques but – even more importantly and more difficultly in an Institute for Plant Biology and Biotechnology – the deep immersion into the world of biomedical thinking. Of course, Margareta managed this challenge with apparent ease. And knowing Margareta, we were not too surprised that she also managed an unusually deep immersion into our doctoral baptism pond afterwards.