Prof. Gurvan Michel’s farewell coffee and cake (and sparkling wine), and his final seminar

Last week, Prof. Gurvan Michel, who had been our guest as a Humboldt fellow for one year, gave his farewell coffee and cake - joined by his wife Corinne and his famous son, Judikael. He found very nice words of thanks for us. And this morning, he gave his farewell seminar in our lab meeting. He first summarized his previous work which he had helped finalising for Nature Chemical Biology while with us, on the bacterial ulvan localisation locus. Then, he described the cloning and heterologous expression of the first enzymatically active fucan deacetylase which he has achieved in our labs. This work is part of his large national research project “Breaking Alg” on the Discovery of Enzymes for the Control of the Biotechnological Properties of Sulfated Fucans. He invited us to become an associated partner in this project, widening its scope e.g. towards using well-characterised, enzymatically produced fucan oligosaccharides for sustainable plant protection. Gurvan, we are greatly honoured and happy to know that you enjoyed your time in Münster and with us. We certainly enjoyed having you here. Together, we are grateful to the Alexander von Humboldt foundation for awarding you the Bessel Research Award which made your stay with us possible. Let us make sure that this is going to be the start of a new and fruitful collaboration between Münster and Roscoff.