Emerging Trends in Natural Product Biotechnology
From September 20 to 21, almost 100 scientists from all over Europe gathered at the International Meeting Center to present and discuss innovations in the biotechnological production of natural products.
In addition to the biosynthesis of natural products and the engineering of metabolic pathways, the main topics were biocatalytic and chemoenzymatic processes and their technical implementation. Numerous poster presentations and 20 lectures highlighted current developments in these research fields. Each thematic session was introduced by a plenary lecture. Martin Grininger (Goethe University Frankfurt) started the session by presenting structure-guided concepts for the design of tailor-made enzymes. Tilmann Weber (DTU Biosustain, DK) highlighted the use of digital technologies in natural products research. A special highlight of the first day was the evening lecture by Birger Lindberg Møller (University of Copenhagen, DK), in which work on channeling photosynthetic electron flow for sustainable production processes was presented. The second day's scientific program began with Jason Micklefield (University of Manchester, UK), who provided numerous examples of biocatalytic and cell-based production of natural product-derived APIs. Finally, Frank Hollmann (TU Delft, NL) presented enzymes from the class of peroxygenases as particularly versatile biocatalysts for technical processes. The great interest in the presented topics was expressed in a lively participation in the discussions both after the individual lectures and during the poster show.
Finally, the symposium ended with the awarding of the three best posters. An independent committee selected Melanie Mindt from the group of Volker Wendisch (University of Bielefeld), Huijuan Guo from the group of Christine Beemelmanns (HKI Jena) and Paul Ebersbach from the junior research group of Erik Freier (ISAS, Dortmund) as prize winners. At the end and also after the conference there was a lot of positive feedback from the participants to the organizers, so that hopefully this event will be continued in Dortmund.
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