EU project PolyModE - Polysaccharide Modifying Enzymes
The PolyModE project (financially supported by the European Union’s 7th Framework Research Program) convenes an international, interdisciplinary, and intersectorial consortium involving universities, research centres, start-up and multinational companies from Denmark, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Romania, and Sweden (www.polymode.org). Together, these partners will identify, analyse and use various novel polysaccharide modifying enzymes in order to be able to conceive, produce, and analyse polysaccharides with specific, defined physico-chemical properties and/or biological functionalities to be used for food and medical applications. The team at WWU-IBBP is mainly involved in the work package on chitosan modifying enzymes, seeking to prepare and analyse partially acetylated chitosan polymers with non-random patterns of acetylation. Metagenomic and biochemical approaches are pursuit to identify novel chitin deacetylases and sequence-specific chitosan hydrolases. These enzymes will be analysed and optimised by means of protein engineering for their use in the production and analysis of novel chitosans, respectively. In combination with in silico modeling, we are developing enzymatic / mass spectrometric fingerprinting method for the analysis of patterns of acetylation. The novel chitosans developed will be analysed for their biological activities towards micro-organisms, plants, and human cells and tissues.
In the framework of the PolyModE project, we seek to recruit one post-doctoral researcher to strengthen our team of molecular biologists, microbiologists, and biochemists. The candidate should have a strong background in protein engineering (e.g. SDM, in vitro evolution) and/or in molecular modeling (e.g. protein 3D structure).