Emerging Field
Emerging Field

Biopolymers

The University of Münster’s emerging field “Biopolymers” is uniquely situated in the community thanks to the combination of research groups which are actively studying biopolymers at all scales, from the microscopic to the macroscopic. Their activities focus among other things on sustainability, reverse genetic engineering, functionalisation and targeting of biomolecules for multiple applications. Moreover, selected expertise can be combined to create a modular platform that will allow hybrid biopolymers to be fully explored, ranging from structural elucidation to functional engineering. Drawing on this disciplinary and interdisciplinary expertise, the researchers involved in the emerging field “Biopolymers” analyse the regulation of complexity and function at the biopolymer level and contribute to the understanding of this interplay and how it impacts the scientific sector and society on the whole. A relevant example is the exciting discovery of glycoRNA which is comprised of polynucleotides and polysaccharides as well as molecular structures of multi-protein complexes containing polysaccharides and embedded lipids for functional tuning.

The emerging field “Biopolymers” brings together expertise in chemical and enzymatic synthesis, in vivo pathway engineering, surface science, catalysis, structural exploration, biomedicine and analytics. The excellence and innovation potential of the emerging field are demonstrated by numerous interdisciplinary joint research projects which address scientific questions with state-of-the-art methods and strategies and constitute an important step towards solving current societal problems.