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 07/2025
Members
Technicians
PhD students
students
News
September 2025 | Lea Wolf joins the group to start working on her PhD-thesis as part of the DFG-funded project C1-BOOSTER – Welcome, Lea! |
August 2025 | The HHU practical course “Microbial Biotechnology” starts with two students joining our group. Welcome, Stella and Fabio! |
July 2025 | Jan gives a talk at the “4th Swiss-German-Japanese Workshop on Biocatalysis and Bioprocess Development” in Greifswald |
June 2025 | Jan´s review paper on “Engineering of Corynebacterium glutamicum for the synthesis of aromatic compounds” is published: https://rdcu.be/eoL48 |
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! |
Last Modified: 01.10.2025