TU Munich — Pro­fess­or­ship of Fungal Bio­tech­no­logy in Wood Science

Gen­er­ally, our group is inter­ested in the molecu­lar path­ways of poly­sac­char­ide per­cep­tion in fungi. How do fungi recog­nize their car­bon-based envir­on­ment, and how do they integ­rate the respect­ive sig­nals, enabling them to gen­er­ate a spe­cif­ic, tail­or-made response for an effi­cient degrad­a­tion of the giv­en car­bon source? We are try­ing to answer these ques­tions using state-of-the-art molecu­lar bio­logy tools, next-gen­er­a­tion sequen­cing and sys­tems bio­logy approaches. While we are using the fil­a­ment­ous Asco­my­cete and genet­ic mod­el sys­tem Neurospora crassa as our main organ­ism for basic sci­ence ques­tions, we are also work­ing with oth­er fungi of bio­tech­no­lo­gic­al rel­ev­ance, such as Tricho­derma ree­sei and Asper­gil­lus niger, but also with wood-degrad­ing Basi­dio­my­cetes, such as Pos­tia pla­centa (a brown-rot). Our goal is to apply the know­ledge gained from study­ing the fungal car­bon per­cep­tion and response in vari­ous ways: either via enhan­cing pro­tein secre­tion or car­bon meta­bol­ism in bio-indus­tri­al fer­ment­a­tions of, for example, agri­cul­tur­al waste products, or via the devel­op­ment of nov­el wood pro­tec­tion mechanisms.