Prof. Dr. Natalia Tschowri from the Institute of Microbiology has received an ERC Starting Grant for her project "SecMessFunctions".
The European Research Council (ERC) grants are aimed at young researchers who completed their doctorate between two and seven years ago. The grants of up to 1.5 million Euros are intended to help young researchers in launching their own projects and building their own research groups, to expand their scientific independence.
SecMessFunctions is the project acronym for "Second Messenger Functions". Prof. Tschowri's working group investigates the functions and regulation of so-called secondary messengers. “The key to bacterial life in almost every single niche on our planet are their versatile signalling systems”, explains Prof. Tschowri, “In such systems, second messengers are crucial information carriers that elicit cellular adaptation to diverse signals.”
New insights into antibiotic-producing bacteria
In SecMessFunctions, Natalia Tschowri will explore the functions and metabolism of novel dinucleotide-based signalling molecules by using Streptomyces bacteria as a model. “Streptomyces are our most prolific antibiotic producers and represent an excellent system to study multicellular differentiation”, says Tschowri. The bacteria live in soil, where they encounter diverse environmental cues that trigger antibiotic production and a complex transition from multicellular filaments to unicellular spores.
Together with Prof. Dr. Russell Cox from the Institute of Organic Chemistry and the Centre of Biomolecular Drug Research (BMWZ), they will also investigate how secondary messengers can be used for optimization of natural product synthesis.
The ERC-funded project will lead to the discovery of fundamental new principles in bacterial signalling and differentiation. It could also identify new cell wall associated targets for drug design, as well as tools for triggering antibiotic biosynthesis.
- Press release by the Leibniz University (only available in German)
