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This year, we once again hosted Girls’ and Boys’ Day, which was superbly organised and supervised by our PhD student Viktoria Warth, who once again showed great dedication.

After a brief tour through the lab, during which the participating pupils were able to get a taste of the day-to-day work of our PhD students, they got straight down to some hands-on experimentation. The production of fragrant fruit esters was very popular – the banana and apple flavours in particular were a big hit.

Other experiments also invited the pupils to get…

On 17 April, Tim Moritz Weber completed his PhD with the thesis titled “Total Synthesis of Clickable Natural Product Derivatives and Manufacturing of Conjugates for Target-Specific Application of Potential Drugs”, graduating summa cum laude. We would like to offer him our warmest congratulations! Many colleagues were there to congratulate him on this fantastic achievement and to listen to his presentation.

Moritz is a true all-rounder who felt equally at home in the fields of synthetic chemistry and molecular biology. With great dedication –…

Over the past few days, we have had the pleasure of welcoming several new faces to the institute. A total of seven undergraduate and postgraduate students have joined us and are now beginning their time at IBOC. Our work-study trainee, Tim, is also starting work on his undergraduate thesis.

They are currently attending our induction module, where the foundations are laid and they gain initial insights into methods and procedures, before subsequently devoting themselves fully to their research projects.

We are particularly delighted by the…

Last week, we welcomed Amy-Jolene, an eleventh-year student from the Städtisches Rurtal-Gymnasium in Düren, to our laboratory.

For five days, she had the chance to explore the world of science with our PhD students Viktoria (unfortunately not in the photo), Dominic, Catharina and Elias. And not just in theory: she made fragrant fruit esters (yes, they really do smell lovely!), got to know our NMR machine, tried out PCR methods and purified proteins

Dear Amy-Jolene, we had a brilliant time showing you our work – and above all, seeing your…

The Spring Symposium, organised by the JCF regional forums of Cologne-Leverkusen, Aachen, Düsseldorf, and Bonn, took place from 10th to 13th March in Cologne. As part of the media and website team, Annika contributed to both the preparation and on-site organisation of the event. During the conference, four additional PhD students (Viktoria, Stina, Daniel, and Marc) supported the event as volunteers.

Throughout the conference, students, PhD candidates, senior researchers and industry representatives came together to share inspiring science and…

From 25 to 27 February, the 38th Irsee Natural Product Symposium took place once again at Irsee Monastery. Organised by DECHEMA, this year's symposium once again impressed with exciting presentations and relevant poster contributions. Our doctoral student Marisa Bickmann presented her poster entitled ‘Functional Analysis of VdtC, an O-Methyltransferase in the Viriditoxin Biosynthetic Pathway’ and represented our institute very well. Thank you very much, Marisa!

The work on the enzymatic synthesis of metaraminol, a compound with significant pharmaceutical relevance, has been a fascinating journey. Under the leadership of colleagues at IBG-1, great progress has been made in developing a fully biocatalytic process. This process does not require conventional metal catalysts, toxic solvents or fossil raw materials.

The two-step process, which first uses a pyruvate decarboxylase and then an amine transaminase, is proving to be a promising basis for sustainable production. However, a number of challenges,…

Lucas Theis successfully defended his Master's thesis on 18 February 2026.

We congratulate him warmly on this achievement.

As part of his work, he systematically investigated selected Cα-N-methyltransferases and tested their activity against cyclic and linear homo-dipeptides. This was a challenging topic, to which he devoted himself with great dedication.

We are delighted that Lucas will be continuing his scientific career with us and will now begin his PhD at IBOC.

Dear Lucas, we wish you all the best for this next step and continued…

Last Thursday, we had the pleasure of celebrating two successful doctoral examinations. Both Marcel Schatton and Frederike Weber successfully completed their doctorates. We would like to congratulate them both!

Marcel defended his thesis entitled ‘Indole derivatives in the synthesis of natural product-inspired active ingredients’.

As part of his doctoral studies, he succeeded in the total synthesis of Lansai B, which also resulted in a publication. Marcel enriched everyday life in the laboratory not only professionally, but also personally.…

A new joint publication by Lisa Böhmer and Benjamin Chapple was released this week. We are delighted about this wonderful achievement and offer our heartfelt congratulations!

This paper presents the first decoupled, continuous, fluorescence-based high-throughput screening method for determining the activity of S-adenosyl-L-methionine-dependent methyltransferases. The assay is based on proton release during methylation and is suitable not only for purified enzymes, but also for cell-free extracts and, in certain cases, for pretreated whole-cell…