Project

Bacterial enzymes : from virulence factors to industrial applications

Code
bof/baf/4y/2024/01/278
Duration
01 January 2024 → 31 December 2025
Funding
Regional and community funding: Special Research Fund
Research disciplines
  • Natural sciences
    • Proteins
    • Bacteriology
Keywords
Functional proteomics and interactomics protein secretion bacteria Enzymes
 
Project description

Bacteria produce extracellular enzymes. these enzymes mainly serve to degrade a range of polymers in their environment to individual building blocks that can be assimilated en serve as nutrients. The main classes of enzymes involved are hydrolases and redox enzymes that are used to degrade proteins, polysaccharides, lipids etc. Our aim is to identify and characterize such enzymes wherein we mainly investigate propertes that are useful for industrial applications, e.g. high temperatures or pH stability.

Some opportunistic bacteria use their enzyme arsenal also to infect their host or to circumvent the host's immune system. In the second part of our research we wil also investigate proteases and other protein converting enzymes involved in bacterial pathogenesis with a focus on bacteria associatesd with hospital acquired infections such as Burkholderia cenocepacia and Stenotrophomonas maltophilia,