Michael Sulk came back from his three-months research stay in Tralee, Ireland
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. He was supervised there by our alumna Dr. Maha Attjioui who had also previously looked, e.g., after two of our Bachelor students of last year. One of them, Sarah Schleper, had continued work which our then doctoral candidate Anne Vortkamp had begun during a research stay in Tralee, namely the microphenotyping of chitosan-treated Arabidopsis plants. Based on the preliminary work of his predecessors, Michael succeeded in establishing two new bio-assays for our well-defined chitosans which he now plans to establish in our lab. This will allow him to finalize his Master thesis by evaluating the influence of the degree of polymerisation, the fraction of acetylation, and the pattern of acetylation on different plant strengthening bioactivities of partially acetylated chitosan polymers and oligomers. We expect that these results will broaden our base on which we are developing knowledge-based plant biostimulants for sustainable agriculture. Thank you Maha, Shane, and Oscar for your support of Michael, and for the continuous collaboration!