News

FunChi meeting in Madrid

Meeting in Madrid
FunChi consortium
© Antonio Molina

This year’s Spring meeting of the European Research Area - Industrial Biotechnology research project FunChi was organized by Prof. Antonio Molina from the renowned Centre of Biotechnology and Genomics of Plants at the Polytechnical University of Madrid. Our Spanish industrial partner Plant Response Biotech has its laboratories at the same place. Our German industrial partner Weiss BioTech was represented by Dr. Mareike Dirks-Hofmeister, and our Dutch academic partner Leiden University by Prof. Arthur Ram and Tim Leeuwe, while Prof. Peter Punt from Dutch DNA unfortunately could not join the meeting. From our German academic partner,, the University of Münster, Prof. Dr. Bruno Moerschbacher and Dr. Nour Eddine El Gueddari were accompanied by Anna Niehues, Soofia Khanamadi, and Jasper Wattjes. All partners, presented their results of the first year of the project, and defined the plans for the coming six months. Most importantly, we decided on joint protocols for the isolation and characterization of the fungal cell walls and of the chitin extracted from them. We also agreed on additional materials such as reference chitosans and Arabidopsis strains to be exchanged and on exchange visits of our students to make best use of the synergistic potential of the different competences and infrastructures of the project partners. We will meet again in January 2018 in Leiden in the Netherlands.

FunChi kick-off meeting in Münster

Kick-off meeting in Münster
FunChi consortium
© Jasper Wattjes

The European Research Area - Industrial Biotechnology research project FunChi coordinated by Bruno Moerschbacher had its belated kick-off meeting this week in Münster. We welcomed the CEO of our German industrial partner Weiss BioTech, Hans de Bie, and his research team consisting of Dr. Mareike Dirks-Hofmeister and Dr. Vasil Iliev, Prof. Arthur Ram and his PhD student Tim Leeuwe from our Dutch academic partner University of Leiden, Prof. Peter Punt from our Dutch industrial partner Dutch DNA Biotech, Prof. Antonio Molina and Dr. Sara Storres from our Spanish academic partner Polytechnical University of Madrid, as well as Prof. Marise Borja and Dr. Frederic Brunner from our Spanish industrial partner Plant Response Biotech. The goal of the FunChi project is to develop plant strengthening chitosans on the basis of chitin extracted from the cell walls of filamentous fungi used for the industrial production of technical enzymes. The Dutch partners will be responsible for optimizing the fungal strains for better chitin yields, the German partners will develop protocols for the extraction of high quality chitin from the waste mycelium, and the Spanish partners will convert the fungal chitin into plant strengthening chitosans.