Synthetic Cell Factories
About
We want to contribute to the understanding of bacterial metabolism and are interested in expanding the biosynthetic capabilities of microorganisms for applied purposes.
We focus on the engineering of Corynebacterium glutamicum and Escherichia coli for the sustainable production of value-added small molecules such as natural products, fine chemicals or pharmaceutical building blocks from biomass and other carbon-rich waste streams.
In addition, we are developing new molecular tools for genome editing and high-throughput screening of metabolite producing bacteria at the single cell level using biosensors and fluorescence-activated cell sorting (FACS).
Research Topics
Microbial synthesis of aromatic (plant) natural products and other aromatic molecules of biotechnological interest
Substrates from Biomass for a Sustainable Industrial Biotechnology
Development of Transcription Factor-based Biosensors and their Utilization for High-throughput Screening of Microorganisms using FACS
Research activities take place at Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH whereas most teaching activities are conducted at the RWTH Aachen University (Chair of Biotechnology).
SynCells 07/2024
Members
Technicians
PhD students
students
News
May 2025 | Helen Weiler joins the SynCells as Biological Technical Assistant – Welcome, Helen! |
March 2025 | Dominic Kösters gives a short lecture about “Modular and standardized strain engineering of Corynebacterium glutamicum using Modular Cloning (MoClo)-based CRISPR/Cas12a workflow” |
February 2025 | Liam Wesemann successfully defended his thesis! Congratulations! |
January 2025 | Marie Laufens started her experimental work for her Master´s thesis in our labs. Welcome! |
December 2024 | Daniela´s first paper is out: “From molasses to purified α-ketoglutarate with engineered Corynebacterium glutamicum” (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biortech.2024.131803) |
November 2024 | Jan attends the Biocat4value conference in Düsseldorf/Germany and gives a talk about the Jülich Biofoundry activities |
September 2024 | Mario successfully defended his thesis at the RWTH Aachen University. Congratulations! |
July 2024 | First biofoundry paper published: “AutoBioTech─A Versatile Biofoundry for Automated Strain Engineering” (https://doi.org/10.1021/acssynbio.4c00298). Congratulations to everybody involed! |
June 2024 | Jan gives a talk as part of the lecture series “Industrial Biotechnology” of the FH Aachen |
June 2024 | Jan gives a talk at the Annual Conference of the Association for General and Applied Microbiology (VAAM) in Würzburg |
May 2024 | Jan gives two talks at the summer school “Short Course in Biocatalysis” at the Interdisciplinary Centre of Marine and Environmental Research (CIIMAR) in Porto, Portugal. |
April 2024 | Florian Gätgens joins the group for his doctoral studies. He will work on the efficient utilization of biomass-derived xylose within the graduate cluster AUFBRUCH. Welcome, Florian! |
Last Modified: 20.05.2025