Working Group Industrial Microbiology

Filamentous fungi, particularly the so-called white-rot fungi, are the only organisms known that have evolved the specialized extracellular mechanisms needed to efficiently and exhaustively degrade wood and other lignocellulosic plant materials that account for most of the terrestrial fixed carbon. The research of the project group aims at elucidating these mechanisms and at the application of the acquired knowledge for the development of biotechnological processes based on fungi and their enzymes.

Ongoing projects involve the development of an overall concept for the sustainable production of chemicals from wheat straw, the biomimetic transformation of lignin to valuable intermediates for plastics and chemical industry, the use of fungi and enzymes to control the emission of volatile organic compounds from wood composites, the control of “blue stain” of wood by fungal antagonists, and the use of advanced FTIR methods to asses fungal transformation of wood polymers.