Our bodies, windows or plastic bottles – all of them are made up of different molecules. The big difference however: while the molecules in the human body or other living organisms are in constant exchange with their surroundings, artificially produced material is not. This in turn directly affects their ability to break down after being used.
Art history or biology? During his school days, Johannes Gescher couöd have chosen either one. Eventually though, the biology studies won out, and the young student moved from his birthplace of Fulda to the university town Freiburg. Once there he was captivated by the world of microorganisms almost immediately: “Even during my undergraduate degree, I saw that my future was in microbiology,” Gescher says today.
The vanadium-dependent nitrogenase is an enzyme that catalyses two important processes: On the one hand it converts atmospheric nitrogen (N2) to ammonia, on the other hand it reduces carbon monoxide (CO) to hydrocarbons. Today, both reactions are run on a big scale by chemical catalyses to produce ammonia and fuels for industry. In additon, ammonia is used as synthetic fertilizer to ensure the food production for at least half of the world’s population.
Adenosine triphosphate (ATP) is the ubiquitous energy currency of all living organisms. Without it there would be no metabolic processes or growth possible – for animal cells as well as plant cells. Headed by the University Bonn an international team of researchers was able to visualise the ATP distribution and utilisation during stressful phases in living plant seedlings.
Until now, converting organic waste into fuel has not been economically viable. Excessively high temperatures and too much energy were required. Researchers at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) managed to significantly reduce the temperature and energy requirements for an integral step of the chemical process by using a novel catalyst concept: they confined the reaction to small spaces inside zeolite crystals.
Wild Emmer wheat (Triticum dicoccum) is the wild form of nearly all the domesticated wheat in the world, including both durum (pasta) and bread wheat. Wild emmer is too low-yielding to be of use to farmers today but it contains several attractive characteristics that could be used by plant breeders.
Over the last five years the new CRISPR-Cas genome editing tool has revolutionized molecular biology. The new technique allows for completely new ways of genetic engineering with relatively little effort at all. Based on this method a team of researchers headed by Andreas Houben at the Leibniz Institute of Plant Genetics and Crop Plant Research (IPK) in Gatersleben and Holger Puchta from the Botanical Institute of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology developed a method to visualize defined genomic sequences in living plant cells.
Environmentally-conscious customers demand drinking containers that are reusable as well as made of sustainable materials. Evonik and the Taiwanese company Sungo have combined their expertise to manufacture a handy but sturdy drinking bottle made of high-quality sustainable material: the Ludavi bottle. The bottle is made of the transparent microcrystalline polyamide Trogamid Terra biopolymer by Evonik Industries. The biopolymer consists of more than 50 percent renewable raw materials, such as palm kernel and coconut oil.
Resurrecting formerly extinct animal species has been a utopian dream for many researchers, and even Hollywood used this idea to resurrect dinosaurs in Jurassic Park. As implausible and surreal it may seem – scientifically speaking we’re not that far off from being able to bring back extinct species. The recent huge breakthroughs in the area of genetic engineering and stem cell biology have turned this utopia into a not-so-distant reality.
If drops of water roll off a surface this effect is known as the lotus effect. It is caused by specific surface structures, and industry often applies this effect to protect textiles or building surfaces. But bacteria and bacterial biofilms also produce this water-repellent surface, which makes them extremely difficult to clean off. Oliver Lieleg, Professor of Biomechanics at the Munich School of BioEngineering, and his colleagues investigated the underlying physical mechanisms that cause the resilience of bacterial biofilms.