News

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, 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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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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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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