Prof. Tamo Fukamizo from Japan visited us

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. His visit is supported financially by a travel grant from the Internationalisation Fund of the University of Muenster. Prof. Fukamizo is a world renowned researcher who has been working very successfully on chitin and chitosan degrading enzymes for more than twenty years. He gave an extended seminar today on plant chitinases and bacterial chitosanases and their role in plant disease protection. His work mostly focuses on structure-function relationships of these enzymes, a topic that is of high relevance for our own work, too. He has been involved in elucidating the molecular mode of action of chitinases belonging to glycoside hydrolase families GH18 and GH19 as well as their antimicrobial activities. Similarly, he pioneered the classification of chitosanases, defining families I, II, and III chitosanases based on their (-1) and (+1) subsite specificities, a classification which we have recently extended by including subsites (-2) and (+2), and by taking into account relative preferences in addition to absolute specificities. We had ample opportunity to discuss our common interests and came up with a plan for a more extended visit later this year. With the support of Sandra Wiegand from the International Office of our university, we have begun to identify possible funding sources for this visit so that hopefully, Prof. Fukamizo can support our research and enrich our teaching this summer.