Katharina Ost successfully defended her Master thesis: “Chitin and Chitosan Modifying Enzymes in Aspergillus niger”

Today, Katharina Ost successfully defended her Master thesis which involved an international collaboration with Prof. Arthur Ram of Leiden University in the Netherlands and Prof. Adrian Tsang from Concordia University in Montreal, Canada. Katharina had initially planned to pursue her Master project entirely in Prof. Tsang’s group, but the pandemics prohibited her traveling so that we designed a project of mutual interest to his and our group. The plan was to start in Münster, then continue in Montreal as soon as this would be possible again. Unfortunately, this never happened. But fortunately, we were able to rope in Prof. Ram into the project, and this allowed Katharina a research stay abroad, in Leiden. Trying to satisfy the wishes of three professors was certainly not an easy task, but Katharina managed it with ease. And with success, too. She presented two stories today, one on improving the heterologous expression of chitin and chitosan modifying enzymes in Aspergillus niger, and one on engineering the Aspergillus niger cell wall for better chitin accessibility. Both projects will continue in our groups, and Katharina will continue as a doctoral candidate in the group of our alumna Prof. Mareike Dirks-Hofmeister in Osnabrück, continuing the fruitful collaboration with us and the partners abroad.