Thuringian Research Award 2005: 4 Laureates from the HKI
 

On May 10, 2006 the Thuringian Research Award 2005 was awarded to Karin Martin, Christian Hertweck, Laila P. Partida-Martinez, and Martin Roth (from the left) from the Hans Knoell Institute.

The Thuringian Research Award 2005 for Fundamental Research was awarded to Prof. Christian Hertweck and Laila P. Partida Martinez from the Dept. Biomolecular Chemistry.
In a groundbreaking project about bacterial endosymbionts in fungi Hertweck and Partida-Martinez discovered the genuine producer of antimitotc rhizoxin.
The fungus Rhizopus microsporus is infamous for causing rice seedling blight. The plant disease is in fact caused by the macrocyclic polyketide metabolite rhizoxin. Due to its remarkably strong antimitotic activity in most eukaryotic cells, including various human cancer cell lines, rhizoxin has also found considerable interest as a potential antitumor drug.
Both researchers demonstrated that the pathogenicity factor and antitumoral agent rhizoxin is not biosynthesized by the fungus itself, but by endosymbiotic bacteria of the genus Burkholderia.
The unexpected findings unveil a remarkably complex symbiotic-pathogenic relationship that extends the fungal/plant interaction to a third involved bacterial key-player. Hertweck and Partida-Martinez are currently investigating various aspects related to this unprecedented symbiotic alliance.

L.P. Partida-Martinez & C. Hertweck
Pathogenic Fungus Harbours Endosymbiotic Bacteria for Toxin Production.
Nature 2005, 437, 884-888.

The Thuringian Research Award 2005 for Applied Research was awarded to Dipl.-Biol. Karin Martin and Dr. Martin Roth from the Dept. Pilot Plant for Natural Products.
In interdisciplinary cooperation with scientists and engineers from the Institute for Bioprocessing and Analytical Measurement Techniques Heiligenstadt, the Institute for Physical High Technology Jena and the Technical University Ilmenau (joint project MINIKULT funded by the BMBF) a novel technology for separate cultivation of large numbers of individual microbial cultures in microcompartments was developed.
The microfluidic system allows generating of aqueous culture compartments (40 – 100 nanoliter) separated by a liquid immiscible with water using a microchannel injector chip device, incubating in PTFE capillaries, detecting growth and finally sorting of individual culture compartments.
That technology was applied for cultivating microorganisms from soil samples. Bacteria of diverse phylogenetic origin could grow in those microcompartments. It was shown that rare species can be isolated using this cultivation approach.
In addition to the search for new microbial species the technology is expected to be applicable in pharmaceutical, biotechnological and environmental analytics and medical diagnostics as well as in drug screening.