The ChitoBioEngineering project (to be financially supported by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research BMBF and its Belgian and Spanish counterparts), will convene an international, interdisciplinary, and intersectorial consortium involving universities, research centres, and start-up companies from Belgium, France, Germany, and Spain. Together, these partners will develop and scale-up biotechnological ways for the production of well defined, partially acetylated chitosan oligomers and polymers for reliable applications in medical and pharmaceutical sciences. The team at WWU-IBBP will mainly be responsible for the identification and optimisation of suitable chitin synthase and chitin deacetylase genes, and for their expression in different suitable host strains. The chitosans produced will be characterised for their chemical structure and for their biological activities, most prominently in wound healing, but also concerning their antimicrobial or plant strengthening activities.
In the framework of the ChitoBioEngineering 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 molecular biotechnology, preferably in the heterologous expression of enzymes or in protein or metabolic engineering.
We are also seeking to recruit one research technician to support our team in the further development and routine performance of gene expression and fermentation of chitin modifying enzymes in different hosts. The candidate should have experience in molecular microbiology and biotechnology.
Finally, we are seeking two doctoral students to support our team by persuing projects of their own design within the framework of the ChitoBioEngineering project. One of the projects should be more chemically oriented, targeting the chemical analysis and modification of biotechnologically produced chitosans, and the other project should be more biologically oriented targeting the optimisation of chitosan modifying enzymes by protein engineering. These projects will have to be performed in close collaboration with our partners in France (Grenoble) and Spain (Barcelona), respectively, so that part of the work (up to 50 % of the time) will have to be performed in the labs of our partners.