Anna Niehues and Max Linhorst participated at the International Symposium on Green Chemistry in La Rochelle, France

The International Symposium on Green Chemistry - ISGC 2019 - was held this week in La Rochelle, France, and our post-doctoral researcher Anna Niehues as well as our doctoral candidate Max Linhorst actively participated. With about 650 participants, 350 oral presentations and 200 posters, this is a large conference on an increasingly important topic in which enzymes play an increasingly important role. Clearly, we need to minimize the impact of human activities on our planet, and this includes to device more energy- and atom-efficient and less waste-producing industrial processes. Nature of course provides prime blueprints for such green solutions, and enzymes are nature’s tools to achieve this with unmatched precision and efficiency. Anna had been invited to present her work on novel tools for the enzymatic-mass spectrometric fingerprinting analysis of partially acetylated chitosan polymers, in particular their pattern of acetylation. Max presented his work on the chemo-enzymatic regio-selective functionalisation of partially acetylated chitosan oligomers. Both contributions were well received, and one conclusion of the conference was that there should be a special emphasis in future on contributions in the area of biocatalysis. Clearly, enzyme biotechnology will become a key player for Green Chemistry, opening up new opportunities for biotechnologists in the chemical industry.