A key carbohydrate is cellulose, an unbranched homopolysaccharide consisting of β-1,4-linked glucose molecules. Cellulose is the most abundant biopolymer on earth primarily produced by plants. Interestingly, cellulose is also a component of the cell wall of certain cyanobacteria.

Establishment and development of bioreactors for long-term cultivation of heterotrophic and phototrophic microorganisms, with regard to co-cultivation and production of biotechnologically relevant organisms.

This project is concerned with the communitarisation of cyanobacteria with fungi. For this purpose, the model organisms S.elongatus (cyanobacterium) and S.cerevisiae as representatives of the fungi are co-cultivated in a Photobioreactor Multi-cultivator OD100 or Photo-bioreactor FMT 150.

Underlying oscillators have been described in many eukaryotes and cyanobacteria and exert global influence on gene expression and metabolism, we consider a comprehensive understanding of the timing mechanism with a special focus on cyanobacteria to be important for manifold aspects of basic research as well as synthetic applications.

Sigma factors (σ factors) are essential for the promoter DNA-binding specificity of RNA polymerase. Different σ factors are involved in driving the transcription of different subsets of genes and are themselves expressed by different environmental or stress inputs.

DNA-supercoiling is a global regulatory mechanism in bacteria. This mechanism directly relates to the energy status of the cell. While the chromosome of actively growing cells is negatively supercoiled, stationary cells contain more relaxed DNA.

While cyanobacteria are becoming increasingly attractive for various research applications, robust transcriptional and translational regulatory systems are still limited. While many systems are available for established model organisms such as E. coli, these often fail to translate directly to nonconventional model organisms.

The development of cyanobacteria as host organisms for biotechnological applications has attracted increasing interest in recent years. Several production systems for compounds with low structural complexity such as alcohols, sugars and fatty acids have been established in cyanobacteria model strains. In our working group we conduct research on cyanobacterial host systems to produce high value components like terpenoids.