Heads of Group:

• Prof. Dr. Michael Bott
• Dr. Meike Baumgart

Bacteria are key players in the cycles of carbon, nitrogen, and sulfur on earth. Their metabolic diversity and biocatalytic power are unrivaled and they are essential for the circularity of biological processes, which are completely devoid of waste production.

We explore and harness bacteria to develop cell factories enabling the conversion of renewable carbon sources into chemicals, food and feed additives, and proteins. This concept contributes solutions to the defossilation of the chemical industry, to the mitigation
of climate change, and to the development of a circular bioeconomy.

We focus on Corynebacterium glutamicum as a robust multipurpose industrial cell factory. Our research aims at a systemic molecular understanding of its metabolic and regulatory capabilities and the application of this knowledge for the development of novel cell factories using metabolic engineering, adaptive laboratory evolution, or biosensor-based high-throughput screenings. With the newly established Biofoundry Jülich, robotic workflows

are currently implemented for several of these approaches, aiming at speeding up strain construction and enlarging the solution space that can be tested.