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,