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Current members

Here our faculty members give a brief overview on their research and the various methods they employ. If you wish further infos on individual members just click the link in their description.

Bange, Gert

The Bange lab investigates the molecular physiology of microbes and their short- and long-term responses to environmental changes and stress conditions.

Expertise: cellular biochemistry, X-ray crystallography, Hydrogen-Deuterium exchange mass-spectrometry, small angle X-ray scattering, electron microscopy

Batschauer, Alfred

The Batschauer lab characterizes the biological functions and spectoscopic behavior of photoreceptors of the biotrophic fungus Ustilago maydis.

Expertise: targeted gene knock-outs, RNASeq, UV-Vis Spectroscopy, ITC, heterologous protein expression

Becker, Anke

The Becker lab studies the genetics, physiology and cell biology of alpha-proteobacteria with multipartite genomes. Main interests are symbiotic and pathogenic interactions with their eukaryotic host cells as well as evolution and function of bacterial multipartite genome architectures.

Expertise: synthetic microbiology, regulatory networks, microbe-host interactions, genomics and transcriptomics, bacterial genome editing

Bremer, Erhard

The Bremer lab investigates the genetics, physiology and structural biology of osmostress protectant synthesis and transport. Pathway discovery of systems for the catabolism of osmostress protectants.

Expertise: synthetic microbiology, metabolic pathway discovery, gene/function relationships, enzyme biochemistry & crystal structure analysis, function/structure analysis of osmostress-regulated transport systems

Brune, Andreas

Termite guts are tiny bioreactors that convert lignocellulose to microbial fermentation products that fuel the metabolism of the host. The Brune Lab studies the prokaryotic and eukaryotic symbionts, their functional role in digestion, and the ecological and evolutionary relationships of the microbiota in different host groups.

Expertise:phylogenetic analysis, microsensors, high-resolution chromatography, physiological and genomic characterization of isolates and the metatranscriptomic response at the community level  

Dahlke, Stephan

The Dahlke lab is interested in the mathematical modeling of protein concentrations in cells

Expertise: mathematical models based on reaction-diffusion equations, reliable and efficient numerical simulation of solutions

Erb, Tobias J.

The Erb lab studies the biochemistry & synthetic Biology of microbial metabolism with focus on the discovery and design of CO2 fixing enzymes, pathways and microorganisms.

Expertise: synthetic biology, metabolic pathway discovery and design, enzyme biochemistry and enzyme engineering, physiology of CO2-fixing microorganisms (Cyanobacteria, Alphaproteobacteria), mass spectrometry

Essen, Lars-Oliver

The Essen lab studies structure and function of fungal adhesion proteins and photoreceptors. 

Expertise: X-ray crystallography, ITC, thermophoreses, fluorecence titration, HDX-MS

Graumann, Peter 

The Graumann lab studies dynamic processes in bacteria with a focus on the spatial organization and biochemistry of the cell. Key questions are how bacteria maintain their cell shape, how they regulate and drive their cell cycle and how is DNA is transferred between bacteria?

Expertise: cellular biochemistry, super-resolution microscopy

Kolb, Peter

The Kolb lab uses computational methods to develop a comprehensive understanding of small-molecule:protein interaction profiles in molecular detail and predict ligands with tailored properties for G protein-coupled receptors and kinases.

Expertise: computational docking, chemoinformatic derivatization of molecules, molecular dynamics simulations, structure-based ligand design, database development

Li, Shu-Ming

The main focus of the Li lab is the production of biologically active prenylated indole derivatives in bakers yeast. For this purpose, we characterize and combine different key genes derived from the secondary metabolism of different ascomycetes and yield a high structural variety of the respective products.

Expertise: protein expression in yeast and E. coli, HPLC and LC-MS, NMR and MS of small molecules

Liesack, Werner

The Liesack lab elucidates the effects of low, moderate, and high salinity on the metabolic and transcriptional activity of paddy soil microbial communities. 

Expertise: Combination of process measurements and molecular ecology methods, in particular the community-wide transcriptome analysis by Illumina RNA-Seq.

Lill, Roland

The Lill group elucidates of the molecular role of cellular monothiol glutaredoxins in iron homeostasis and iron-sulfur protein biogenesis.

Expertise: Yeast genetics and biochemistry, RNAi and CRISPR technology, Biochemical reconstitution of Fe and FeS cluster insertion into purified proteins, Spectroscopy (e.g., UV-Vis, CD, fluorescence, EPR), Dynamic protein interaction studies

Maier, Uwe

The Maier lab is interested in the Cell Biology of diatoms. Especially intracellular protein targeting, biotechnology and cellular responses in respect to changing environmental conditions are in the focus of our work. 

Expertise: Fluorescence and electron microscopy, genomics and bioinformatics, sub-cellular protein localization, genetic engineering of diatoms

Randau, Lennart

The group of Lennart Randau investigates small RNA-guided processes in bacteria and archaea, which include (i) CRISPR-Cas activity, (ii) sRNA regulation and (iii) RNA modification via C/D box s(no)RNAs. Research topics focus on small RNAs and fragmented RNA genes that shape the co-evolution of prokaryotes with viral predators.

Expertise: RNA biochemistry, recombinant ribonucleoproteins, RNA-seq, Bacteriophage assays, CRISPR interference

Sogaard-Andersen, Lotte

Overall we seek to understand how bacteria adapt and differentiate in response to changes in the environment. To this end, the group of Lotte Sogaard-Andersen uses Myxcoccus xanthus as a model organism to understand how bacteria coordinate signalling by nucleotide-based second messengers, motility, intercellular communication and the cell cycle in response to environmental changes. 

Expertise: molecular genetics, live cell fluorscence microscopy, in vitro characterization of proteins & protein-protein interactions, electron microscopy, RNA seq, comparative genomics 

Sourjik, Victor

The Sourjik Lab is interested in a broad range of topics in quantitative microbiology, using both bacteria (E. coli, B. subtilis) and yeast (S. cerevisiae, S. pombe) as model systems. Our main focus is on quantitative analysis of the spatial organization and real-time functioning of cellular networks. 

Expertise: FRET, FRAP, FCS, FACS, Computational modelling 

Thanbichler, Martin

The Thanbichler group studies the cell biology of bacterial model organisms, with a focus on morphogenesis, cell division, and chromosome segregation.

Expertise: molecular biology & genetics, fluorescence microscopy (incl. FRAP and FRET), biochemistry, protein interaction analysis (MST, BLItz, SPR)

Waidner, Barbara

The Waidner group elucidates  cell cycle,  origin and maintenance of the helical cell morphology of the human pathogenHelicobacter pylori.

Expertise: molecular genetics, biochemistry and live cell fluorscence microscopy