In the biochemistry group, our focus is on harnessing the metabolic abilities of microorganisms to produce valuable biochemicals. This approach is an integral part of the biorefinery concept, which envisages the efficient conversion of renewable resources into a range of useful products including organic acids, proteins and alcohols. Our work involves understanding and manipulating microbial pathways to optimize production yields and create sustainable alternatives to traditional chemical processes. To accomplish this goal we work with industrially used fungi and yeast like Aspergillus niger, Pichia pastoris and Saccharomyes cerevisiae.

Current research topics are

• understanding organic acid production with Aspergillus niger
• engineering methanol assimilation in yeast
• development of cell-free systems for the characterization of transport proteins
• nitrogen recovery from sewage sludge
• developing detection methods based on DNA aptamers for fungi