Master defence: Sandra Lindner successfully defended her Master thesis today

Today, Sandra Lindner virtually defended her Master thesis, supported by her supervisors, Prof. Bruno Moerschbacher and Prof. Dirk Prüfer from our institute. Sandra had investigated the potential of our recombinant chitin deacetylases to act in reverse, adding acetyl and even other acyl groups to the free amino groups of chitosans. We already knew that chitin deacetylase can catalyze this N-acetylation reaction, and that different enzymes generate chitosans with different acetylation patters in the process. Using site-directed mutagenesis studies, Sandra tried to influence these patterns by protein engineering. She then used the enzymes also for the N-acylation reaction and started developing chemo-enzymatic mass spectrometric fingerprinting methods for the analysis of the resulting acylation patterns. In this way, she laid the foundation, together with her direct supervisor Max Linhorst, one of our doctoral candidates, to make use of the regio-selectivity and co-substrate promiscuity of chitin deacetylases for the production of chitosan derivatives with non-random substitution patterns. Sandra has done an excellent job thanks to her extremely careful way of working and her attention to detail. Thus, we are very happy, Sandra, that you will continue for a few more months to support us in finalizing the fingerprinting techniques so that we can publish your work appropriately!