The challenges that our society is facing are enormous including climate change, growing population, limited resources, decline of crude oil, energy supply, nutrition, health and mobility. The development of intelligent bioeconomy concepts will play a pivotal role for the future developments, which are based on the more efficient use of the biomass of our planet aiming at the production of new biobased materials, pharmaceuticals, biopolymers and chemicals for various applications.
The Center for Biobased Solutions (CBBS) develops solutions for those challenges with special emphasis on robust enzymes for various industrial applications. We are screening robust enzymes (extremozymes) from extreme nature habitats for replacing chemical reagents or developing completely new solutions in “greener” and sustainable industrial processes. This includes the conversion of biomass for chemicals and energy as well as the degradation waste products in recycling processes. Hence, we contribute to the successful transition from crude oil era to a circular bioeconomy.
Expertise:
- Enzyme discovery
- High throughput screening
- Bioinformatics, including metagenomics und transcriptomics for in silico enzyme discovery
- Recombinant production/fermentation, purification and characterization of enzymes
Research fields:
- Diversity of extremophilic microorganisms and their extremozymes in hot environments
- Microbial and enzymatic degradation of plastic polymers for recycling and waste treatment
- Biological degradation of carbon-fiber-reinforced resins
- Enzymatic extraction of high-value products from marine biomass
Team:
