New tenure track: understanding and engineering microbial metabolism for health and sustainability

Lennart Schada von Borzyskowski comes from the Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology in Marburg, Germany. There he labored as a postdoctoral fellow on the metabolism of – considerably counter-intuitively – marine micro organism. By way of understanding the metabolism of those micro organism, he needed to enhance Cyanobacteria and vegetation: sure enzymes in marine micro organism act as a shortcut in plant metabolism to make them develop extra effectively. The final word objective is to use this precept in crop vegetation to extend their yield.

Well being and sustainability points

On the IBL, Schada von Borzyskowski will proceed to give attention to marine micro organism and different environmental microorganisms. By studying extra about how these micro organism work together with different organisms, he needs to use their options to well being and sustainability points, such because the biodegradation of environmental pollution or the prevention of dangerous algal blooms. Moreover, he needs to develop a so-called ‘chassis’ from a marine microorganism that he can instruct to supply antibiotics or different helpful compounds. Schada von Borzyskowski hopes that within the coming years his work will contribute a robust sustainability element to IBL’s main precept ‘Harnessing biodiversity for well being’.

Metropolis of discoveries

The brand new tenure tracker is trying ahead to collaborating with established scientists on the IBL and with different institutes at Leiden College. He already envisions synergies with different analysis executed on the IBL, as an illustration with the Horizon 2020 MARBLES project on marine microbial consortia and their bioactive molecules, which is coordinated by Gilles van Wezel. Lennart Schada von Borzyskowski: ‘I’m desperate to see if Leiden’s motto ‘Metropolis of discoveries’ comes true for my analysis, in addition to for me personally.’

Header picture: Helgoland, one of many places the place Lennart Schada von Borzyskowski collected marine micro organism samples (by: Lennart Schada von Borzyskowski).