News

Today, Katharina Ost successfully defended her PhD thesis in the presence of friends and colleagues, her Doktormutter Prof. Mareike Dirks-Hofmeister, and her two other committee members, Prof. Arthur Ram from the University of Leiden, NL, and Prof. Bruno Moerschbacher (who, thus, became Doktorgroßvater, as Mareike pointed out) from the University of Münster which is also in charge of awarding the doctoral degree.
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Dr. Dominique Gillet, serial founder of France Chitine, Gillet Chitosan, Mahtani Chitosan, and Stellar Biosol, came to visit us in Münster for a day of intense discussions on the future of chitosans.
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This year, for the first time, we did not celebrate our Christmas Party in the institute but instead, went out, to the newly opened brewery Finne.
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Today, as every year, Nicolaus came to our institute, and he seems to again appreciate our performance towards and beyond Prof. Bruno Moerschbacher’s retirement. Yes, we are getting fewer, but we are still strong!
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Today, we are extremely proud to have witnessed the central PhD award ceremony of the University of Münster during which our former doctoral and current post-doctoral researcher Margareta “Maggi” Hellmann received the Rectorate’s PhD Award 2025 of the University of Münster.
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For three weeks, our colleague Prof. Francisco Goycoolea has been visiting us to continue our collaborative project in the framework of the DFG Priority Programme “Codeχ – The Code of Chito-Protein Interactions”.
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Today, Lea Theile - one of our last (but not yet the last) Master candidates successfully defended her MSc thesis in front of our still not so small research group, and supported by her two “opponents”, her formal supervisor Prof. Bruno Moerschbacher as well as her second reviewer, Prof. Maik Böhmer from the University of Frankfurt.
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We were a strong and very visible delegation, six strong all told, at this year’s ICCC / SIAQ in Hermosillo in the North of Mexico. After the inaugural lecture given by Prof. Bruno Moerschbacher, two post-doctoral researchers from our group, Dr. Stefan Cord-Landwehr and Dr. Margareta Hellmann, gave oral presentations in the same session.
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As important as talks are posters at any scientific conference. The huge advantage of poster over oral presentations is that the people who performed the work are actually presenting it themselves – while oral presentations are all too often given by the professors who supervised, but did not carry out the work and, thus, are often ignorant of the details.
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After the Asia-Pacific Chitin and Chitosan Symposium APCCS in Taiwan just two months ago, last month’s International Conference on Chitin and Chitosan ICCC, co-organized with the conference of the Iberoamerican Chitosan Society SIAQ, in Mexico was the second important conference for our research topic this year.
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Dr. Naivy Nava visits us for a short research stay in our group during which she intends to follow-up on her doctoral project on developing chitosans as a plant biopesticide protecting plants from soil-born nematodes.
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Today, our secretary-and-foreign-language-correspondent-turned-project-manager Cordula Kurth was awarded the certificate for the successful completion of her studies so that now, she also formally has the qualifications of a business administrator. We are not surprised.
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Today, Dr. Margareta Hellmann’s and Katharina Eickelpasch’s paper has been accepted for publication in the renowned journal Carbohydrate Polymers. Together with Dr. Carolin Richter, who also serves as senior and corresponding author for the paper, they had selected pairs of chitosans with similar degrees of polymerization and fractions of acetylation, but different patterns of acetylation, random or regular.
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Dr. Stefan Cord-Landwehr, supported by Dr. Margareta Hellmann, has again come up with a new method for chitosan analysis which has just been accepted for publication in the renowned journal Carbohydrate Polymers.
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As in other fields, too, the Corona pandemic led to a gap in the three regular international chitin and chitosan conferences, EUCHIS, SIAQ, and APCCS.
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There are three regular international meetings of the chitin and chitosan scientific community: the biannual meetings of the European Chitin Society EUCHIS and of the Ibero-American Chitin and Chitosan Society SIAQ, as well as the Asia-Pacific Chitin and Chitosan Symposium APCCS organized by East- and South-East-Asian societies in turn.
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Today, Carlos Girão’s first paper containing results from his sandwich doctoral year with us in Münster has been accepted for publication in the journal Biocatalysis and Agricultural Biotechnology.
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After almost 30 years, today was Bruno’s last day as a regular professor at the university of Münster, but he was appointed senior professor for one more year.
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“Start-up Contacts” is organized by the “Venture Club Münster”, a large local student-initiative for start-ups and innovation organizing this annual fair since 2023 under the motto “Vision Becomes Venture”.
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The “MS-Wissenschaft” is a ormer freight ship turned into an exhibition ship for science, particularly addressing the pupils and non-expert interested visitors.
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This week, Prof. Moerschbacher was invited again to give a general lecture on “Chitins and Chitosans – Analysis and Applications” at the famous European Glycosciences Summer School which was organized this year in Groningen, the Netherlands.
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From May 12-14, Margareta Hellmann visited the first "INSECTSplus" conference, jointly organized by the German Institute of Food Technologies (DIL) and the Leibniz Institute for Agricultural Engineering and Bioeconomy (ATB). 
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Today, Margareta “Maggi” Hellmann finalized her doctoral voyage with presenting it in three minutes to her guests and those of her twelve fellow doctoral candidates. Not an easy task given that her thesis contained nine manuscripts on almost 400 pages.
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Today, after a long time, another young researcher from our group received her doctoral degree: along with 15 other young Doctors, Mounashree Student took the oath, pledging to “strive at all times to preserve the doctoral title from every blemish, prove herself worthy of this title in all future academic endeavours, and to always seek and uphold academic truth to the best of her knowledge and belief”.
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Today, Sirikan ‘Gundum’ Pongnan, a doctoral candidate from the Vidyasirimedhi Institute of Science and Technology (VISTEC) in Pa Yup Nai, Thailand, presented her project for her sandwich year in our research group.
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Today, a paper by Prof. Jogi Madhuprakash from the University of Hyderabad, to which Dr. Stefan Cord-Landwehr from our group contributed his analytical expertise, has been accepted for publication in the renowned journal “Carbohydrate Polymers”.
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Today, Margareta Hellmann successfully defended her doctoral thesis on the “Influence of cell wall modification by chitin deacetylases in Cryptococcus neoformans on the human immune response” in front of her doctoral committee, Prof. Bruno Moerschbacher, PD Christian Gorzelanny from the Institute of Dermatology and Venerology of the University Hospital Eppendorf in Hamburg, and Prof. Alexander Weber from the Institute of Immunology at the University of Tübingen.
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At the beginning of this week, this year’s annual retreat of the DFG Priority Programme on Chitin, Chitosan and Chito-Oligosaccharides and Their Interactions with Proteins of the Extracellular Matrix and Cellular Signaling – CodeX – was held in Münster.
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Today, another manuscript that has been really long in the making has been accepted for publication in the renowned International Journal of Biological Macromolecules.
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Today, another of the manuscripts in Margareta Hellmann’s doctoral thesis has been accepted for publication in the renowned journal Frontiers in Immunology.
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Today, Mounashree Student defended her doctoral thesis entitled “Ustilago maydis chitin deacetylases – A story of specificity and redundancy” supported by her ‘Doktorvater’ Bruno Moerschbacher and the two other members of her doctoral committee, Prof. Volha Shapaval from Norway and Prof. Jenny Lodge from the US. Prof.
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Today, the first paper originating from Katharina Ost’s doctoral project on engineering the fungus Aspergillus niger for optimized protein production has been accepted for publication in the renowned journal The Cell Surface.
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And again! Yet another of Margareta Hellmann’s manuscripts has been accepted for publication today, in the journal SoftwareX.
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Today, another of the manuscripts which are part of Margareta Hellmann’s doctoral thesis has been accepted for publication in the International Journal of Biological Macromolecules.
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Today, one of Margareta Hellmann’s manuscripts has finally been accepted for publication in the renowned journal “Scientific Reports”.
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Today, the PIs, post-doctoral and doctoral researchers of the research projects funded by the German Research Foundation DFG in the framework of its Priority Program “Codeχ [BM1] – The Code of Chito-Protein Interactions” met in Siegen for the first time.
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Today, Martin Bonin’s second central paper resulting from his doctoral project with us has been published in the renowned journal PLOS Biology.
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This year, we celebrated our Christmas party together with the group of Prof. Till Ischebeck, the designated successor of Prof. Bruno Moerschbacher. We also had a mixed orga team, and they did a great job! Food and Glühwein, Wichteln and Pub-Quiz were superb – we also deserved it after another highly successful year!
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He seems happy again this year. Nikolaus brought chocolate copies of himself for everyone. This year, with just five papers (so far! – more is to come...), including one that is still under embargo, we achieved an average impact factor of 8.2, essentially the same as last year (8.1) with then six papers.
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Today, our alumnus Dr. Martin Bonin was about those new doctors who were invited by our University to be honoured for defending their doctoral thesis this year with "summa laude".
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Today, we learned that yesterday, Carlos Girao from the Federal University of Ceará in Brazil, who had spent six months with us during his ongoing PhD earlier this year, was awarded third place for oral presentations
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Today, after a long preparation time, our proposal for a Start-up Transfer NRW project, along with its 14 (fourteen!) amendments, has finally been granted. Our alumna Dr. Anne Vortkamp together with our alumnus Dr. Philipp Lemke had applied to set up AgriBluBio
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Today, we were visited by a high-ranking delegation from Shandong province in China. The County Mayor of Linshu County, Mrs. Hou Suyun, accompanied by the Director of Linshu Economic Development Zone, Mr. Wang Shaolong, and the Director of Linshu County Industry 
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Today finally, we received the granting letter for our NRW Patent Validation project "Lab to Field". This will allow Dr. Sruthi Sreekumar and Dr. Carolin Richter, founders-to-be of our next start-up "greEnCAP", to perform field trials to add value to our patent "Chitosan-Coated Emulsion and Uses Thereof".
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Our 'sandwich' alumnus Prof. Enio de Oliveira and his wife Prof. Ana de Oliveira, both from the Federal University of São João del Rei in Ouro Branco in the State of Minas Gerais in Brazil, have arrived in Münster last weekend, and in our institute today.
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Today, after about two years, our joint project with Dr. Christian Gorzelanny from the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf was granted by the German Research Foundation, DFG
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Today, during the Science to Start-up Convention S2SC of the REACH Euregio Start-up Center, Vera Fleuter obtained the REACH thesis award for her Master thesis
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This week, right after the excellent chitin and chitosan conference in Iceland, we had our own small, but not less intense chitin and chitosan meeting here in Münster
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Finally, after so many years without any international chitin and chitosan conference, we met with about 100 colleagues from all over the world in far-off, charming Siglufjörður, the Northern-most town of Iceland.
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Today, we finally received confirmation for our Start-up Transfer.NRW grant application to support the foundation of the planned biotech start-up AgriBluBio by our alumna Dr. Anne Vortkamp, supported by our alumnus Dr. Philipp Lemke.
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Finally, we received confirmation that our application for a NRW Patent Validation Grant for the patent "chitoCAP" was successful. We will use the budget to allow Dr. Sruthi Sreekumar and Dr. Carolin Richter to further validate their technology to produce chitosan-stabilized microemulsions of hydrophobic bio-actives such as plant essential oils to be used as environment-friendly and consumer-safe agro-biologics for sustainable agriculture.
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Today, this year's RootCamp Accelerator programme ended with a demo day where our alumnae Dr. Sruthi Sreekumar and Dr. Carolin Richter had the opportunity to pitch the idea for their start-up greEnCAP to industry giants, initiating potential collaborations with enthusiastic stakeholders.
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Today, Dr. Ratna Singh's manuscript on quantum mechanics based in depth in silico-analysis of copper ion binding to chitosan has been accepted for publication in the International Journal of Molecular Sciences.
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Today, the members of the AbDü consortium met for the kick-off meeting of this European research and development project which aims to develop an automated, AI-controlled bioreactor for the conversion of agricultural side streams into a smart biofertilizer.
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Just one week after his successful defence, Max Linhorst was awarded with the official doctoral certificate and, equally important, with the doctoral hat prepared by his colleagues from our team.
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Our ‘sandwich’ alumnus Dr. Enio de Oliveira and his wife Dr. Ana de Oliveira have both been granted three-month fellowships in the framework of the DAAD programme „Research Stays for University Academics and Scientists“.
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Today, Max Linhorst successfully defended his doctoral thesis on the biotechnological production of novel chitosan derivatives using chitin deacetylases acting in reverse.
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Today, we received the granting letter for our project ChitoCode in the framework of the DFG-funded priority programme (SPP 2416) “CodeΧ  -  Chitin, chitosan and chito-oligosaccharides and their interaction with proteins of the extracellular matrix and cellular signaling”.
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Today, we finally had another SP8 summer party, after the sad Corona times. Hopefully, we can now resume our regular annual schedule.
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This year, Prof. Bruno Moerschbacher was invited as a guest lecturer at the 17th Summer Course Glycosciences, held 11 - 15 June 2023, in Wageningen, the Netherlands.
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This year, we reached the site of our mini-symposium, the girls scout home “Baustelle” in Dülmen, by bike. It took us a bit more than two hours, mostly along the “Kanal”, in beautifully sunny weather.
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Today, finally, Martin Bonin formally became Dr. Martin Bonin. First, his defence had to be postponed because both written reports evaluated his thesis as “summa cum laude”, necessitating additional evaluation by a third, independent, external reviewer.
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This week, our Brazilian sandwich doctoral researcher Carlos Girao visited the 7th Green and Sustainable Chemistry Conference in Dresden and presented a poster
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Today, our alumna Prof. Dr. Mareike Dirks-Hofmeister  gave her inaugural lecture as Professor of Food Biotechnology at the University of Applied Sciences in Osnabrück.
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Today, Vera Fleuter successfully defended her Master thesis on the production and agricultural use of an insect-derived chitosan which she had performed partly in our group and partly in the labs of Bex-Biotec, the biotech start-up of our alumna Dr. Rebecca Melcher.
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This year, we were again invited to participate at the Hannover Fair, according to its own website “the most important international platform and hot spot for industrial transformation – with excellent innovations or unusual products”.
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Today, Martin Bonin successfully defended his PhD thesis entitled “Subsite occupation and preferences in chitin deacetylases guide their mode of action”.
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Like every year, Nikolaus visited us and left copies of himself for everyone. Again, the size of our group has declined, as planned. But we are still strong!
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While Corona certainly is not yet a thing of the past, it would seem that we have started to learn to live with it. What a blessing that molecular biology and nanobiotechnology have joined forces to create the mRNA vaccines in almost no time 
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Today, the first paper of our Norwegian partners in the LignoLIPP project has been accepted for publication in the journal “Carbohydrate Polymers”, with our post-doctoral researcher Dr. Stefan Cord-Landwehr as a co-author.
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Today, the first paper of Rita Weyer’s doctoral thesis was accepted for publication in the journal “Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology”.
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Today, the main paper of the doctoral theses of Dr. Sruthi Sreekumar, Dr. Jasper Wattjes, and Dr. Anna Niehues, who share first-authorship, also containing some essential data from the doctoral thesis of Dr. Tamara Mengoni, has finally appeared in the journal “Nature Communications"
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Today, our doctoral candidate Mounashree’s first first-author paper has been accepted for publication in the renowned journal “Carbohydrate Polymers”, with our postdoctoral researcher Dr. Stefan Cord-Landwehr as the senior author.
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Today, Judith Ryll successfully defended her Master thesis on a comparative analysis of transcriptomic data from different plant species treated with different, well-defined chitosans, supported by Prof. Bruno Moerschbacher, and by Prof. Shuqing Xu from the Institute of Evolution and Biodiversity.
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Today, Anika Jürß successfully defended her Master thesis on the use of chitosan to stabilize emulsions of essential oils in water which may be used as plant protectants, making use of a potentially synergistic action of plant strengthening chitosans and antimicrobially acting essential oils.
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Today, Sonja Raetz successfully defended her Master thesis on the use of enzymatically produced chitosans for plant protection, supported by Prof. Bruno Moerschbacher, and by Prof. Jochen Schmid from the Institute for Molecular Microbiology and Biotechnology.
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Today saw the first Poster Symposium of our Structured Doctoral Programme BioSciences, fully organised by the doctoral candidates themselves, for themselves, supported by Dr.Uschi Windmüller, the Scientific Coordinator of the programme who has lots of experience in organising such events.
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Today, Dr.Vânia Horta de Passo has joined our group as a post-doctoral researcher, to complement our expertise with her experience in molecular plant pathology and genetics.
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Today, Philipp invited the whole group to his farewell party in the inner courtyard of the institute. Philipp has been one of our “oldest” group members, he joined our lab for the first time during his Master studies in 2013! .
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Finally, our first “post”-Corona Mini-Symposium took place at the end of July in Landhaus Rothenberge, the splendid seminar house of our university just about 40 km North of Münster.
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Today, the latest Newsletter of the European Chitin Society EUCHIS was published. It contains an ‘opinion paper’ from our group which is based on the “Studienarbeit” of our 2020 undergraduates Carolin Potthoff, Lasse Middendorf, and Jonas Sobierey.
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Today, another paper with Max Linhorst as a co-author was accepted for publication in the journal ChemElectroChem.
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Today, the European Society of Applied Biocatalysis ESAB together with the European Technology Platform for Sustainable Chemistry SusChem organised by DECHEMA (Gesellschaft für Chemische Technik und Biotechnologie e.V.) held its joint webinar, which typically airs each last Friday of the month, with four half-hour presentations.
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Today, Denis Qoray successfully defended his Master thesis which he performed in the framework of the Indo-German BioeconomyInternational project Bio-Fun, which is led by our bioinformatician post-doctoral researcher Dr. Ratna Singh and which is financially supported by BMBF.
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Today, the partners of the Norwegian-German “Bioeconomy in the North” project LignoLIPP, which on the German side is financially supported by BMBF (Federal Ministry of Education and Research), met online to report on the progress of the work, plan the final months of the project, and start discussing perspectives for a follow-up project.
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Our postdoctoral researcher Dr. Stefan Cord-Landwehr and our doctoral student Mounashree attended the 18th International Conference on Renewable Resources and Biorefineries from June 1st to June 3rd in the beautiful Belgium city of Brügge.
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After a series of online seminars and conferences over the last two years, our students and PhD candidates were happy to attend an event in person again!
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This year’s Hannover Messe, the world’s leading industrial fair, was organised under the motto “Let’s Create the Industry of Tomorrow”. The Kompetenznetzwerk Umweltwirtschaft NRW (KNUW) had invited us to present our existing and planned start-ups at their booth, along with eight other start-ups from North Rhine-Westphalia.
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Today, a paper of our doctoral alumnus André Wendt dos Santos together with our current post-doctoral researcher Ratna Singh has been accepted for publication in the journal “Frontiers in Plant Sciences”, in a Special Issue on Forest Tree Proteomics.
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Today, Prof. Till Ischebeck, successor in spe of Prof. Bruno Moerschbacher, gave his official inaugural lecture as a Professor of Plant Biotechnology.
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The consortium of the European research project “REDWine - Increasing microalgae biomass feedstock by valorizing wine gaseous” invited the members of its International Scientific Advisory Board, including Prof. Bruno Moerschbacher, to its 12-month meeting this week.
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Today, Katharina Eickelpasch successfully defended her Master thesis, supported by Prof. Bruno Moerschbacher and Dr. Shane O'Connell from the Irish company Brandon Bioscience
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This week saw the Annual Meeting of Plant Research funded by BMBF (the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research) to which Dr. Ratna Singh and her team working on the Bio-Fun project were invited.
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Today, we were informed that our proposal for a new “Schwerpunktprogramm” (Priority Program) on chitin and chitosans has been accepted by the German Research Council, DFG.
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Today, the manuscript or our postdoctoral researcher Dr. Philipp Lemke and his former Master student Lena Jünemann has been accepted for publication in a Special Issue on “Synthetic and Natural Antifungals – Desirable and Hazardous Effects” of the “International Journal of Molecular Sciences”.
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Today, we received the formal approval letter for a short, but exciting new project which we will pursue in collaboration with ‘our’ biotech start-up Bex-biotec.
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This summer has been exceedingly hot in Paraná, one of the Southern states in Brazil. Temperatures passed the mark of 40°C, and much of the crop in this most important agricultural area of Brazil dried up in the fields. This is the dramatic background to today’s book presentation on “Aminoácidos, extratos de algas, extratos vegetais e substȃncias húmicas como: Biofertilizantes” (“Amino Acids, Algal Extracts, Plant Extracts, and Humic Substances as: Biostimulants”) to the Brazilian public.
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Today, Philipp Schröder’s and Dr. Stefan Cord-Landwehr’s paper on an improved method for the quantification of chitosan was accepted for publication in the high-ranking journal Carbohydrate Polymers.
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It is nothing but a little bit of RNA with a protein shell, and yet it has changed our world dramatically. And we begin realizing that it may never be just like before. But perhaps, that is a good thing, and an essential one for our world.
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Even he hadn’t expected Corona to still restrict his travels, but Nikolaus wouldn’t be Nikolaus if he didn’t find a way to visit us anyway.
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Today, a short review by Dr. Stefan Cord-Landwehr and Prof. Bruno Moerschbacher was accepted for publication in a special issue on biomaterials in the journal “Fungal Biology and Biotechnology”.
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International projects currently suffer from the travel restrictions imposed by the pandemics, so the consortium meeting of our BMBF-funded, Indo-German Bio-Fun project was again a virtual one. But despite the problems, both sides had excellent progress to report.
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Since twenty years, November 10 is World Science Day – perhaps more needed than ever in times of the climate crisis and the corona pandemic. Science offers powerful tools for describing the world, and they allow predictions about future developments. Scientific hypotheses evolve and mature by constantly being tested against reality in experiments trying to prove them wrong.
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Today, Dr. Dana Byrtusova from the Norwegian University of Life Sciences (NMBU) in Aas joined us for a two-month research stay in Münster.
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Today, Max Linhorst’s paper on the biotechnological derivatisation of chitosans using a recombinant chitin deacetylase acting in reverse was accepted for publication in the renowned journal “ACS Catalysis” of the American Chemical Society.
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Today, our alumna Dr. Rebecca Melcher received the Unternehmerinnenpreis 2021 – the Womens’ Entrepreneurial Award – of ‘Frauen (u)Unternehmen’, a network for female entrepreneurs and female executives with over 220 members.
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Today, Dr. Naivy Nava received the REACH thesis award for her doctoral thesis on chitosan-induced resistance in plants against nematodes.
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Today, we had the kick-off meeting for the foundation phase of the biotech start-up ‘greenCAP technologies’, financially supported by a start-up NRW transfer grant.
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Following the positive evaluation by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft DFG, we today received the official granting letter of the Ministerium für Kultur und Wissenschaft des Landes Nordrhein-Westfalen MKW for the purchase of a new mass spectrometer equipped with an ion mobility detector.
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Today finally, we had doctoral baptism again when Dr. Soofia Khanahmadi and Dr. Naivy Nava were thrown into the pond in our inner courtyard by their colleagues.
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Today, our group finally had another group excursion after no such event last year due to the pandemics.
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Today, Prof. Dr. Till Ischebeck started his Heisenberg professorship at our institute. He had been offered the Assistant Professorship in Plant Biotechnology with tenure track for the succession to Prof. Bruno Moerschbacher who will retire in 2025.
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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.
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Today, Martin Bonin’s paper on the biochemical and bioinformatic characterisation of a chitin deacetylase from the fungus Aspergillus niger was accepted for publication in the renowned “Journal of Biological Chemistry”.
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Today, we were informed that based on Prof. Bruno Moerschbacher’s application, our recent doctoral graduate Dr. Naivy Nava was selected for the REACH Thesis Award for her doctoral thesis entitled „Biotechnological approaches of chitosan polymer and oligosaccharides to control the plant parasitic nematode, Meloidogyne incognita, and their mode of action in plant defense“.
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Today, we learned that our alumna Dr. Rebecca Melcher will be awarded the “Unternehmerinnenpreis Nord Westfalen ” – the “Womens’ Entrepreneurial Award North Westfalia”.
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Last month, our alumnae Dr. Sruthi Sreekumar and Dr. Carolin Richter had their pitch to defend their start-up proposal in front of the high-ranking start-up NRW transfer jury and today, they were informed their proposal was selected for funding!
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Today, Celina Vila-Sanjurjo successfully defended her doctoral thesis, at the University of Santiago de Compostela in Spain.
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The regular monthly Chitin & Chitosans webinar of the European Chitin Society had its third appearance today, again with two presentations.
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Today, a manuscript from our former doctoral candidates Roberta Paulert and Rebecca Melcher has finally been accepted for publication in the journal “Carbohydrate Polymers”.
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The Carbohydrate Bioengineering Meeting held every other year is one of the most relevant international meetings in our research area.
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Today, both Soofia Khanahmadi and Naivy Nava were officially awarded the title ‘Dr. rer. nat.’, the highly renowned German equivalent of the internationally more widespread ‘PhD’ in natural sciences.
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Today, a paper by Nazanin Noorifar and her colleagues from the group of Prof. Barry Scott at Massey University in New Zealand was accepted for publication in the journal “Molecular Plant-Microbe Interactions”.
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Today, Naivy Nava successfully defended her doctoral thesis, supported by her committee members, including Prof. Bruno Moerschbacher and two nematode specialists, Prof. Johannes Hallmann from the Julius Kühn Institut in Münster and Braunschweig and Prof. Eva Liebau from the Institute for Zoophysiology of our university.
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Today, our doctoral candidate Margareta Hellmann was informed that her application for a doctoral fellowship with the Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes was granted!
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Niloofar Hamzelui, working as a member of the NRW graduate school on Green Electrochemical Energy Storage - GrEEn, won the Second Poster Prize at the annual international conference “Kaftwerk Batterie - Advanced Battery Power” which this year, naturally, was organized as a virtual meeting.
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Today at 11 am, the European Chitin Society EUCHIS launched its first Chitin & Chitosans webinar, in an attempt to close the communication gap between EUCHIS conferences caused by the pandemic.
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Today, Soofia Khanahmadi successfully defended her doctoral thesis, supported by her committee members Prof. Bruno Moerschbacher, PD Dr. Gundula Noll from our institute, and Dr. Sybille Unsicker from the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology in Jena.
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BIOspectrum, the joint journal of several German professional associations for biologists, covered our recent article in Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology in its Journal Club.
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Recently, our doctoral alumna Roberta Paulert informed us about a video she had produced – together with other DAAD alumni - for the German Academic Exchange Council DAAD, reporting on her experience as a DAAD doctoral fellow in our lab.
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Today, the first paper of Dr. Maha Attjioui’s doctoral project was accepted for publication in the journal “Molecular Plant-Microbe Interactions”, one of the highest ranking of the phytopathology journals.
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Today, the Norwegian-European bioeconomy R&D project BYPROVALUE had its late and virtual kick-off meeting.
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Today, our joint paper with the group of Prof. Regine Kahmann from the Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology in Marburg was accepted for publication in the open access journal mBio of the American Society for Microbiology.
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Today, Sandra Lindner virtually defended her Master thesis, supported by her supervisors, Prof. Bruno Moerschbacher and Prof. Dirk Prüfer from our institute.
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A year without Christmas party is like a Christmas tree without family – simply sad. Of course, like everywhere else, our research and teaching were heavily influenced by Corona.
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Today, the main paper of our past “F2F” project was accepted for publication in the journal Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology.
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Today, we learned that the book “Emerging Trends in Plant Pathology ” has finally appeared. In this book, we have published for the first time part of our joint results with the group of our colleague Prof. Jatinder Kumar from the G. B. Pant University of Agriculture and Technology in Pantnagar, India.
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He made it! In spite of travel restrictions in Corona times, Nikolaus visited us as he does each year, to say his thanks for our efforts and successes of the past year.
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Yes, I am surprised myself that we are involved in publishing such a paper. It is the result of our participation in the grEEn project, a NRW Graduate School aiming to make batteries greener, coordinated by the Münster Electrochemical Energy Technology centre MEET.
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Today, a review paper by our doctoral candidate Martin Bonin, our postdoctoral researchers Dr. Sruthi Sreekumar and Dr. Stefan Cord-Landwehr as well as Prof. Bruno Moerschbacher on the enzymatic production of structurally fully defined chitosan oligomers was accepted for publication in the Special Issue on “Complex Carbohydrates and Glycoconjugates: Structure, Functions and Applications” of the International Journal of Molecular Sciences.
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Today, a paper by our former external joint undergraduate student Tamara Limón has finally been accepted for publication in the Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture.
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This Friday, Lea Hembach finally was officially awarded the title ‘Dr. rer. nat.’ Unfortunately, Corona still did not allow us to celebrate her in the Aula of the Schloss, so we could only join her after the ceremony for some cookies and sparkling wine in front of the institute. But Corona or not: Lea was baptised in the institute pond!
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Today, a paper co-authored by our bioinformatician Dr. Ratna Singh was accepted for publication in the journal ‘Pharmaceuticals’.
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Again a good-bye, and again to two people – tough. Today, Elisabeth Seiband, our research technician in three different projects since 2018, and Dr. Eva Regel, who did both her Master and doctoral projects with us, invited the whole group for a farewell party in front of the institute.
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Saying good-bye is always a little sad, having to say it twice is worse, and not being allowed to accompany it with a hearty hug is difficult.
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The third online seminar in preparation of our planned DFG Priority Program on “Chito-Materials in Life Sciences and Technologies - CiLST” was given today by Dr. Linus Stegbauer from University of Stuttgart, on invitation by Prof. Ingrid Weiß.
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Today, Lea Hembach successfully defended her doctoral thesis, supported by her doctoral committee members Prof. Bruno Moerschbacher, Prof. Antoni Planas from Ramon Llull University in Barcelona, and Dr. Christian Gorzelanny from University Hospital Eppendorf in Hamburg.
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Today, Philipp Lemke’s paper describing our first transcriptomic analysis of chitosan-treated plants has been accepted for publication in the Journal “Frontiers in Plant Science”, with Prof. Bruno Moerschbacher as his supervisor and Dr. Ratna Singh as his mentor in bioinformatic analyses as co-authors.
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This Wednesday, Eva Regel was awarded the title “Dr. rer. nat.”, the prestigious title of a Doctor of Natural Sciences.
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Today, Eva Regel successfully defended her doctoral thesis – our first (and hopefully only) full Corona doctor!
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Today, the newly created position for an Assistant Professor of Green Biotechnology at our institute has formally been announced.
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In preparation for a planned DFG Priority Program (Schwerpunktprogramm, SPP) on Chito-Materials in Life Sciences and Technologies - CiLST”, we had today the first online CiLST seminar, organized by the designated CiLST Speaker Prof. Dr. Hans Merzendorfer from the University of Siegen.
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We are happy and proud to learn that our alumna Dr. Mareike Dirks-Hofmeister will be Professor of Food Biotechnology at the nearby University of Applied Sciences in Osnabrück starting this fall.
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Today, part 1 of our review on the pattern of acetylation of partially acetylated chitosans has also been accepted for publication in the “Chitosan for the Future” Special Issue of the journal Reactive and Functional Polymers in honor and memory of George A. F. Roberts and Kjell A. Vårum.
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Today, part 2 of our review on the pattern of acetylation of partially acetylated chitosans has been accepted for publication in a Special Issue on “Chitosan for the Future” of the journal Reactive and Functional Polymers in honor and memory of George A. F. Roberts and Kjell A. Vårum, two eminent chitosan researchers who passed away recently.
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Today, we learned that our first joint paper from the FunCHI project was accepted for publication in the new journal The Cell Surface which is dedicated to research on ‘transkingdom cell wall biology‘.
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Today, we should have been in Norway, but the Corona virus has not allowed this.
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Today, the paper of Xiaofei Qin, who received his doctoral degree already in 2016 from our University, has appeared in the Journal “Bioorganic Chemistry”.
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Today, the website www.pflanzenforschung.de commented in detail on our recent JACS paper in which we described the mono-acetylated chitosan tetramer carrying its acetyl group at its reducing end sugar unit.
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Already on January 3rd, Lea Hembach’s paper on the first ever chitosan deacetylase and its proposed role in the virulence of the human pathogenic fungus Cryptococcus neoformans was accepted for publication in the highly renowned Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA - PNAS.
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Today, we finally received the official approval letter from BMBF, indicating that our German-Norwegian research project LIGNOLIPP on the co-production of valuable lipids and chitosans in Zygomycetes fungi growing on lignocellulose residues from the forestry industry has been granted in the framework of the European research program Bioeconomy in the North.
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Welcome back, Roberta, from 36°C-hot Brazil to luckily sunny and currently not awfully cold Münster. Supported by a fellowship from Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst DAAD, our alumna Dr. Roberta Paulert who is now Professor for Biotechnology at the Federal University of Paraná in Palotina, Brazil, will be in our institute for three months to start a new collaborative research project.
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Finally, after a long time, the book entitled “Chitin and Chitosan: Properties and Applications” has been released in the Wiley Series in “Renewable Resources”.
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Today, the 45th Newsletter of the European Chitin Society - EUCHIS has appeared, edited by EUCHIS Secretary Prof. em. Martin Peter. It contains important information about the forthcoming 14th EUCHIS conference which will be organised in conjunction with the annual meeting of the Russian Chitin Society in Kazan, from September 06 to 10, 2020.
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Today, the third paper from Hellen Barbosa’s half year doctoral sandwich stay with us in 2017 under the direct supervision of Dr. Maha Attjioui has been accepted for publication in the International Journal of Biological Macromolecules.
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Today, a new project of our Norwegian collaboration partner, Dr. Volha ‘Olga’ Shapaval from the Norwegian University of Life Sciences in Ås, has been granted by the Norwegian Research Council.
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Our Master candidate Michael Sulk has continued our successful collaboration with the team of Dr. Shane O'Connell and Dr. Oscar Goñi at Shannon Applied Biotechnology Centre (Shannon ABC) in Tralee, Ireland.
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Each year around this time, the Rector of our university invites all those who received their doctorates during the past year with the highest possible mark - “summa cum laude” - to say the thanks of the university for excellent work.
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It is already a tradition that Nikolaus visits us in the night from December 5 to 6, to bring his chocolate-self to each of our team members, as a token of his appreciation of our efforts and successes during the past year. Seems like we pleased him again!
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The Dutch Carbohydrate Competence Center CCC celebrated its ‘bronze’ jubilee of 12.5 years, and at the same time thanked Prof. Lubbert Dijkhuizen from Groningen University who is about to step down as its Head upon his retirement.
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Finally, another paper of Dr. Jasper Wattjes and Dr. Anna Niehues has been accepted for publication in the renowned international journal Carbohydrate Polymers.
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German universities praise themselves for following the principles of Humboldt who emphasized the unity of research and teaching. But unfortunately, good teaching brings little reputation, much less than good research. Universities are ranked according to their research output in terms of publications. Shouldn’t we rather be judged based on the success of our students?
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The current issue of the alumni magazine of the University of Münster features an article on Dr. Roberta Paulert, who received her Dr. rer. nat. from our university in 2010 and who is now professor for plant biotechnology at the University of Parana in Palotina, Brazil.
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Our doctoral candidate Naivy Nava attended this year’s International Plant Protection Congress in India, organised at ICRISAT, the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics.
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Today, Dr. Maida Romera-Branchat organised the first Plant Science Graduate Student Day - PSGSD 2019 - for the students and doctoral candidates of plant-related research groups of the Institute for Biology and Biotechnology of Plants IBBP and of the Institute for Evolution and Biodiversity IEB of the Faculty of Biology of our university.
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Three of our doctoral candidates attended this year’s International Polysaccharides Conference in Portugal, organised by the European Polysaccharide Network of Excellence EPNOE in conjunction with the Cellulose and Renewable Division of the American Chemical Society (ACS) and the Cellulose Society of Japan (CSJ).
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Another occasion for sparkling wine: Today, Philipp Lemke became Dr. Philipp Lemke. After having successfully defended his doctoral thesis earlier this week, Philipp was awarded the title of Dr. rer. nat., the German equivalent of a PhD in Natural Sciences, by the Faculty of Biology of our University.
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Today, Lena Jünemann successfully defended her MSc thesis on synergistic effects in the antifungal activities of chitosans and commercial fungicides, supported by her first and second referees, Prof. Bruno Moerschbacher and Prof. Dr. Prüfer, from our institute.
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Today, Philipp Lemke successfully defended his PhD thesis, supported by his first and second referees, Prof. Bruno Moerschbacher and Prof. Dirk Prüfer, from our institute, as well as his third doctoral committee member, Dr. Andreas Kortekamp, from the State Education and Research Center of Viticulture, Horticulture and Rural Development (DLR) Rheinpfalz, our collaborator in the smartBioS project.
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Last week in “Lokalzeit Münsterland”, WDR broadcasted a video report on Evorion Biotechnologies, the highly successful start-up company of Hans Kleine-Brüggeney, Robert Weingarten und Dr. Sebastian Bühren.
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Only a few months back, the global report on biodiversity of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) of the United Nations identified agriculture as the main culprit for the unprecedented mass extinction we are currently witnessing. And now, the Special Report on Climate Change and Land (SRCCL) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) of the United Nations again points at agriculture as the main cause for global climate change.
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Last year, Dr. Natalia Calvo visited us for a short post-doctoral research stay in our lab, to learn with Dr. Sruthi Sreekumar how to produce and characterise chitosan-coated nano-capsules for the delivery of hydrophobic antifungal azole drugs for the treatment of vaginal Candida infections.
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This month, Anna started working at the Radboud University Medical Center (Radboudumc) in a collaboration between the Center for Molecular and Biomolecular Informatics, headed by Prof. Peter-Bram 't Hoen, and the Translational Metabolic Laboratory, lead by Prof. Alain van Gool.
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After a gap of several months, we can finally again report on the acceptance of a manuscript for publication. It is the work of Dr. Natalia Calvo and Dr. Sruthi Sreekumar, with their Argentinian co-workers Laura Svetaz, María Lamas, and Dario Leonardi as well as their German co-worker Bruno Moerschbacher.
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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.
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For the past two years, Dr. KRK Reddy has been busy preparing his new coup - and it’s a brilliant coup!
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At the end of June, the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation had its annual meeting which was special this year because of the 250th birthday anniversary of Alexander von Humboldt. As a fellow of the foundation, our guest Prof. Gurvan Michel was invited and joint the celebration.
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This Friday, Sven Basa received his degree certificates, pronouncing him a “Dr. rer. nat.” His family had come from Southern Germany to celebrate with him and of course, the whole group came to hood him.
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This week, the German partners of the Indo-German smartBioS project, financially supported by the Bioeconomy International programme of BMBF, met in Neustadt an der Weinstraße in Southern Germany, on the premises of DLR, the State Education and Research Center of Viticulture, Horticulture and Rural Development of the state of Rhineland Palatinate.
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To say it up front: We do not want to adorn ourselves with borrowed plumes. But we are happy with Prof. Gurvan Michel - who thanks to the Bessel award given to him by the Alexander von Humboldt foundation is currently a member of our group - that his paper on an ulvan degradation locus in the genome of the marine bacterium Formosa agariphila has been accepted for publication in Nature Biological Chemistry.
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This week, we had our yearly mini-symposium of the group, with the Bex-Biotech team as our guests. It had been organized by Rita Weyer, Max Linhorst, and Margareta Hellmann, supported as always by Cordula Kurth. For the first time, the mini-symposium was held at an institute of one of our alumni, Dr. Anne Vortkamp.
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Today, we received the formal granting letter from BMBF indicating that Dr. Ratna Singh’s project on the in silico development of chitin synthase and chitin deacetylase inhibitors has been approved for funding by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research BMBF.
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Today, a high-ranking delegation from the Chinese Shandong province visited us to explore possibilities of future collaborations and exchange.
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Today, Germany’s federal Minister for research and education, Anja Karliczek, published her decision that the new research institute for battery production will be established in Münster, with 500 million Euro of support from the federal government matched by 200 million Euro from the land North-Rhine Westphalia.
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Today, Nilas Hielscher successfully defended his MSc thesis on optimizing bioassays for plant biostimulants, supported by his first and second referees, Bruno Moerschbacher and Dr. Rebecca Melcher from the start-up company Bex-Biotech.
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This week, the 9th International Colloids Conference was held in Sitges near Barcelona, Spain. The conference focused on advanced functional biopolymers and their soft nanosystems. Dr. Sruthi Sreekumar attended this conference, financially supported by the “Gleichstellungsfond” of the Faculty of Biology.
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Today, Prof. Martin Peter - founding member, former President and current Secretary of the European Chitin Society EUCHIS, former professor at the University of Potsdam and one of the globally leading chitosan experts - visited us and gave a seminar in our lab meeting.
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Today, the partners of the nanoControl project financially supported by the ZIM program (Zentrales Innovationsprogramm Mittelstand) of the Federal Ministry for Economy and Energy (BMWi) met in Münster for the half annual consortium meeting, to discuss the results obtained so far, and the plans for the next six months.
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Today, Sven Basa successfully defended his PhD thesis, supported by his first and second referees, Prof. Bruno Moerschbacher and Prof. Andreas Hensel, from the Institute for Pharmaceutical Biology and Phytochemistry, as well as his third doctoral committee member, Prof. Jens Leker, from the Institute of Business Administration, the latter two from the Faculty of Chemistry and Pharmacy of our University.
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The Carbohydrate Bioengineering Meeting - 13 CBM 2019 - was held this week in Toulouse, France, and our two doctoral candidates Eva Regel and Martin Bonin as well as our Master candidate Max Evers actively participated with three posters.
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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.
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My generation grew up with the notion that energy is the most limiting resource on which humanity depends. Perhaps the most captivating board game we played as children was “Öl für uns alle” in which we drilled oil wells, build oil pipelines, bought oil tankers, sold crude oil to refineries, feared fires in our oil facilities, and despaired about exploding transport costs when the Suez canal was closed because of a war in the Near East.
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To biologists, it comes as no surprise. Nature is in distress. One million species (and this is not including bacteria and fungi!), an estimated one eighth of all species existing, are threatened by extinction, in just a few decades.
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This week, the consortium of our European Research Area - Industrial Biotechnology (ERA-IB) project “funCHI - Fungal Chitosans from Fermentation Mycelia for Plant Biostimulants” met at the premises of our German industrial partner WeissBioTech in Zwingenberg near Darmstadt.
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Today, Dr. Sarah Prexler’s manuscript, co-authored by her Master student Martin Frassek and her supervisors Prof. Bruno Moerschbacher and Dr. Mareike Dirks-Hofmeister, on mutational studies concerning the monophenolase activity of dandelion polyphenol oxidases was finally accepted for publication in the highly reputed journal “Angewandte Chemie”!
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Today, Christoph Engwer from the ex-Goycoolea group successfully defended his PhD thesis, supported by his first and second referees, Prof. Francisco Goycoolea, now at the University of Leeds in UK, and Prof. Bruno Moerschbacher, as well as his third, external doctoral committee member, Prof. Ioannis Chronakis from Technical University of Denmark in Copenhagen.
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This week, Prof. Gurvan Michel, CNRS research director at the Laboratoire Biologique de Roscoff in Britanny, France, and currently guest professor at our Institute in Münster, received the certificate for the award of the Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Prize of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, at the annual AvH Research Awards Winners Symposium held in Bamberg.
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Today, Marina Vortmann successfully defended her PhD thesis, supported by her first and second referees, Prof. Bruno Moerschbacher and Prof. Bodo Philipp, and her third, external doctoral committee member, Prof. Volker Wendisch from the University of Bielefeld.
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Today, our former doctoral researcher Roberta Paulert visited us from her sabbatical in Pisa, Italy.
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Today, the manuscript of David Gercke and Eva Regel on engineering ‘our’ chitosanase to generate fully deacetylated chitosan tetramer, GlcN4, when hydrolyzing polyglucosamine was accepted for publication in the Journal of Biological Engineering.
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This month, Lisanne Hameleers started her PhD project at the Rijksuniversiteit Groningen in the group of the tenure-track assistant professor Dr. Edita Jurak.
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Until last year, Prof. Francisco Goycoolea led the round table seminar on “Food Biochemistry” in our fifth semester undergraduate module Biochemistry, but with him now at Leeds University in UK, we had to come up with a replacement.
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Since last year, we are collaborating with altona Diagnostics GmbH in a new ZIM (“Zentrales Innovationsprogramm Mittelstand”) project - “nanoControl - Development of Nanoparticles as Non-Infectious Full Process Controls for in vitro Diagnostics” financially supported by the Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology (BMWi).
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This Saturday, Sabrina Stritzel, Paulina Pieloch, Nadine Dank, Jennifer Wosnik and Hendrik Schulenkorf presented the results of their project on chitosan functionalisation in a public event organised by the Hans-Böckler-Berufskolleg where they are pursuing extra-occupational training as chemical engineers.
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Our first paper this year - an excellent start! Today, one of the joint papers of Dr. Jasper Wattjes and Dr. Anna Niehues has been accepted for publication in the highly reputed Journal of the American Chemical Society - JACS.
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This week, we have a very distinguished visitor, Prof. Tamo Fukamizo, who recently retired from Kindai University in Nara, Japan, and who is currently a visiting professor at Suranaree University of Technology in Thailand.
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Today, Jasper Wattjes successfully defended his PhD thesis, supported by his first and second referees, Prof. Bruno Moerschbacher and Prof. Laurent David from the University of Lyon in France, respectively, and the third member of his doctoral committee, Prof. Francisco Goycoolea from the University of Leeds in the UK.
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Today, Dr. Pierre Alexandre Driguez from the company Sanofi-Pasteur in Paris, France, the third doctoral committee member of Dr. Anna Niehues who supported her during her doctoral defense yesterday, was our guest in the FEB (Forschung & Entwicklung Biologie) seminar series of our Faculty.
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This afternoon, Anna Niehues successfully defended her PhD thesis, supported by her first and second referees, Prof. Bruno Moerschbacher and Prof. Henk Schols from Wageningen University in the Netherlands, respectively, and the third member of her doctoral committee, Dr. Pierre Alexandre Driguez from the company Sanofi-Pasteur in Paris, France.
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This morning, Stefan Hoffmann from the ex-Goycoo group successfully defended his PhD thesis, supported by his first and second referees, Prof. Francisco Goycoolea, now at Leeds University, and Prof. Bruno Moerschbacher, respectively, and the third member of his doctoral committee, Dr. Christian Gorzelanny from the University Hospital Eppendorf in Hamburg.
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Today, the first shared-first-authorship paper of Marina Vortmann from our group and Anna Stumpf from Prof. Philipp’s group in Microbiology was accepted for publication in the journal “FEMS Microbiology Letters”.
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Today, Dr. Ratna Singh’s and her co-workers’ manuscript on an in depth dry and wet lab analysis of “our” chitosanase was accepted for publication in Nature’s open access journal “Scientific Reports”.
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Last month, Martin Bonin started his PhD project in our group, extending studies he had performed when working for his Master thesis.
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Today, the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation informed us that based on Prof. Bruno Moerschbacher’s nomination, Prof. Dr. Gurvan Michel from the Station Biologique de Roscoff in Brittany, France, will be awarded a Bessel Research Award.
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Die extreme Trockenheit im Sommer und Herbst dieses Jahres und ihre Auswirkungen auf die Landwirtschaft hat deren Bedeutung für unsere Ernährung wieder greifbar gemacht und damit auch zu einem Thema für die Presse.
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Today, the next manuscript of Stefan Hoffmann from the Goycoolea group was accepted for publication in the Journal “Nanomaterials”.
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Today, a manuscript from the Schwarzländer group in which Philipp Lemke is a co-author was accepted for publication, again in the excellent “New Phytologist”.
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Dr. Sarah Prexler visited the Novel Enzymes Conference which is held every other year, a conference series devoted entirely to the optimization of existing and the development of novel biocatalysts through protein bioengineering, as key enabling tools for the bioeconomy.
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This week, we organised the second workshop of the German/Tunesian project “Biomaterials with Improved Properties - MatBio”, which is financially supported by BMBF, in Münster.
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Today, the Royal Swedish Academy announced the winners of this year’s Nobel prize for Chemistry: one half goes to Prof. Frances Arnold from the California Institute for Technology, the other half to Prof. em. George P. Smith from the University of Missouri and Prof. em. Gregory P. Winter from the University of Cambridge. They are among the pioneers of protein engineering, having introduced the concept of ‘directed evolution’ into biotechnology.
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On Tuesday afternoon, the partners of the national research and development project “Wertschöpfung aus pilzlichen Fermentationsabfällen durch Herstellung von Feinchemikalien - From Fungal Biomass to Fine Chemicals - F2F” financially supported by the ZIM program (Central Innovation Programme for SMEs) of the BMWi (Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy) met in Münster to discuss the progress of our work and to plan the final steps towards the imminent end of the project.
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From Monday morning to lunch-time on Tuesday, the German, Dutch, and Spanish partners of the European Research Area - Industrial Biotechnology project “Fungal Chitosans from Fermentation Mycelia for Plant Biostimulants - funCHI” met in Münster to discuss the progress of our work and to plan the work for the coming, final months of the project.
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Today, Lisanne Hameleers successfully defended her MSc thesis on enzymes involved in the modification of fungal cell walls during growth, supported by Bruno Moerschbacher and her second referee, Prof. Arthur Ram from Leiden University where Lisanne also spent some time during her Master thesis.
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Today, Dr. Carolin Richter joined us as scientific coordinator of the Indo-German smartBioS project.
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Today, Tamara Mengoni successfully defended her PhD thesis on soft biopolymer-based nanocarriers for drug and gene delivery.
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Today, Teja Kalagara’s paper in collaboration with the dermatology group of Prof. Stefan Schneider and Dr. Christian Gorzelanny, both then at University of Heidelberg/Mannheim and now at University of Hamburg, has finally been accepted in the new open access journal of Blood, Blood Advances.
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Today and tonight saw our traditional SP7/8 summer party, this year organized by the wonderfully important Orga team of the magical Order of Moerschbachers.
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Today, Sarah Prexler successfully defended her PhD thesis on structure-function relationships of plant polyphenoloxidases, in the presence of her Doctoral Committee consisting of Bruno Moerschbacher, Prof. Bodo Philipp from the Institute of Molecular Microbiology and Biotechnology of our university, and Prof. Uwe Bornscheuer from the Institute of Biochemistry at University of Greifswald.
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Today, Sruthi Sreekumar became Dr. Sruthi Sreekumar. Even her parents came all the way from their home in Kerala, India, to attend the convocation in which she received the doctoral certificate, and the doctoral hat the whole group had prepared for her. In the evening she, Dr. Tobias Weikert - our last new Dr. - and Claudia Lüneberg - our former Research Technician - invited all of us for a barbecue in the Innenhof of the institute.
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During the past few days, we had the yearly mini-symposium of our group, in the youth hostel Horn-Bad Meinberg in the Teutoburger Wald.
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Today, Natalia arrived in Münster, coming from her home country Argentina.
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Today, Ekaterina Gubaeva’s and her co-authors’ paper on molecular perception of partially acetylated chitosans in the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana was accepted for publication in “Molecular Plant-Microbe Interactions”, one of the two most highly ranked journals in plant pathology.
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At the end of April, Hellen Barbosa successfully defended her PhD thesis on novel chitosan derivatives and their biological activities at her home university in São Paulo, Brazil.
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Today, Martin Frassek successfully defended his MSc thesis on the structural basis of monophenolase versus diphenolase activities of plant polyphenol oxidases, supported by Bruno Moerschbacher and the second referee, Prof. Joachim Jose from the Faculty of Chemistry and Pharmacy.
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Today, Sruthi Sreekumar successfully defended her PhD thesis on the influence of structural parameters of partially acetylated chitosan polymers on their nanoformulation, in the presence of her Doctoral Committee, Bruno Moerschbacher, Francisco Goycoolea from the University of Leeds, and Prof. Stefan Schneider from the Institute of Dermatology und Venerology at Universitätsklinikum Hamburg-Eppendorf.
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Today, Martin Bonin successfully defended his MSc thesis on characterization and engineering of two fungal chitin deacetylases, supported by Bruno Moerschbacher and the second referee, Prof. Dirk Prüfer from our institute.
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As much as the terrible incident of last Saturday has shocked all of us, we are overwhelmed by the concern of so many of our former students as well as former and current collaborators from around the world.
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Today, the first joint paper from our collaborative research and development project F2F has been accepted for publication in the Journal “Bioresource Technology”.
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Today, David Gercke successfully defended his MSc thesis on the molecular characterization of “our” Bacillus chitosanase BspCSN-MN, supported by Bruno Moerschbacher and the second referee, Prof. Joachim José from the Faculty of Chemistry and Pharmacy.
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After almost a full year, Sruthi Sreekumar’s paper describing how to control the size of chitosan-TPP particles from below 100 nm to more than 1 µm in diameter has finally been accepted for publication in Nature’s open access journal “Scientific Reports”.
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Today, the Centre for Nanotechnology CeNTech in Münster organized its second annual Science Breakfast where three groups had been asked to present their research in nanotechnology and nanobiotechnology.
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The first posting of the year is the most terribly sad one ever: Dr. Nour Eddine ‘Nouri’ El Gueddari has passed away.
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Today, Eva Regel and her co-authors’ paper on our first chitosanase engineering was accepted for publication in the journal “Biotechnology and Bioengineering”.
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Like every year, the new members of the group organised our Christmas party - a tradition which dates back to the era of Prof. Barz, the founder of our Institute.
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Bruno Moerschbacher and Nour Eddine El Gueddari were invited to the 8th International Symposium on Plant Protection and Plant Health - PPPHE held in Braunschweig at the Julius Kühn Institute, under the auspices of the Deutsche Phytomedizinische Gesellschaft.
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Again, our two start-ups, Hans Kleine-Brüggeneys, Robert Weingartens und Sebastian Bührens “Evorion” und Rebecca Melchers still un-named and not-yet-existing company have made it to the media.
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Sruthi has now been with us for three years, and shortly before finishing her PhD, we managed to have her built her first snowman!
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As the coordinator of the ERA-IB project “funCHI”, Bruno Moerschbacher attended the ERA-CoBioTech meeting in Brussels to present this project.
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Wer kennt es nicht, wer liebt es nicht? Eigentlich nur ein Werbeblättchen, das wie so viele andere gleich im Papiermüll landen sollte - und die Leute warten drauf? Das Laborjournal hat geschafft, was eigentlich unmöglich sein sollte.
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Today, we were formally informed that our project “smartBioS - Smart BioStimulants for sustainable plant protection” has been granted in the framework of the Bioeconomy Internationl program of BMBF to develop chitosan-based plant biostimulants for a sustainable agriculture.
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Anne Vortkamp starts today in her new post-doctoral research project in the Rheingau, one of Germany’s renowned wine growing areas.
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Maha Attjioui left us to start her new post-doc position in Ireland.
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Sarah Prexler and her co-authors’ paper on the identification of an amino residue in plant polyphenol oxidases that co-determines their substrate specificity has been accepted today in the journal “Plant Molecular Biology”.