Happy to be granted resource time at the pan-European pre-exascale supercomputer, LUMI. i-Tarmen metagenomes, here we come!
The year started with a lot of education related activities, but now some first research news in 2024: We have a new paper in Microbial Biotechnology, and indentified the (first?) species of the Lactobacillaceae, who transform the deoxyhexose rhamnose to propionate. We provide some first indication that propionate-containing fermentates act as antimicrobials against Salmonella. Have a look:
Full paper available here:
https://ami-journals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1751-7915.14392
Experimental work excellenty led by Ena and Mie with a lot of interactions with other members of the FMT group and with support of Ulrik Sundekilde from AU-FOOD: More to come, please watch out for us!
...with a small contribution by the FMT group. Congratulation to Anja and Markus et al.!
Full paper here: https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.123.065517
Find us in Copenhagen next week at the yearly Danish Microbiology Society Congress.
Watch out for Ker Sin Ng presenting on 'Environmental pH and compound structure affect the potential of short-chain carboxylic acids as antimicrobial metabolites' in Session 3 'Innovation through fermentation: microorganisms for food, feed and fun'
and posters of:
Angeliki Marietou 'Lactose addition increases expression of fecal microbiota beta-galactosidases and the fermentative production of butyrate independent of the presence of starter cultures' &
Mensure Elvan 'Deoxyhexoses as overlooked fermentation substrates for food microbes'
Yes, we published our last year's study on the fermentability of fucose (actively fermented) and fucoidan (not a gut microbe's favorite) by human fecal microbiota.
More to be found here:
https://academic.oup.com/femsec/article/99/10/fiad107/7287365?searchresult=1
More to come in the future, we will continue to work on exciting fucoidan and find ways to make it accessible to bacteria!
Ker Sin obtained a Short Term Research Grant from the Deutsche Akademische Austauschdienst (DAAD) to support her secondment at the Center for Biotechnology (CeBiTec) at the Universität Bielefeld. Congratulations Ker Sin, and enjoy your stay!
We are delighted to receive generous funding from the LEO Foundation, which will allow us to continue collaborating with Caroline Roduit and Remo Frei (Inselspital Bern, Switzerland) and Hanne Frøkiær (Copenhagen University, Denmark) to work on infant gut microbiota development and the occurrence of atopic dermatitis. Please find out more here: https://leo-foundation.org/en/grantee/
We will have an opening for a postdoc position soon!
That was delightful news during holiday time, paper accepted. Congratulation Lucia! Thanks to all the collaborators from Denmark, Switzerland and the Czech Republic and to the NNF Foundation and AUFF for funding.
Feel free to check the paper out at: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19490976.2023.2241209
Meet us at FEMS Microbiology 2023 in Hamburg.
We will be presenting:
posters at 'Food Microbiology' Poster Area level 1, monday morning:
M71 Lucia Huertas Diaz 'Short chain carboxylic acids as antimicrobials against food and gut related clostridia'
M121 Ker Sin Ng 'Environmental pH and short chain carboxylic acid structure affect antimicrobial activity and biofilm formation of Salmonella'
and a flash presentation at FP5/8: Environmental Microbiology & Ecology, Monday 16:30-18.00
of Dr. Qing Li 'Biomarkers predict the presence of a common intestinal microbial function and the relationship to diet and gut physiology'
photo courtesy of Jakub Hosek
Looking forward to working on 'A novel sustainable bioprocess to obtain nutritious single cell protein (SustainPro)' with Dr. Maria Florencia Bambace (FMT) and Mario Martinez Martinez (AU-FOOD)
The more we read about short chain carboxylic acids (which seems to be the most encompassing term), the more complex the mode of action became. Great effort of Ker Sin to keep the overview. The next generation of AU students will for sure hear about this paper in the biopreservation lectures ;).
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214799323000802
Glad to receive funding from the DFF - it will be FERMOSE: 'An overseen role of fermentation of L-fucose by intestinal microbiota'. Looking forward to a collaboration with Prof. Tillmann Lüders from the University of Bayreuth, Germany.
Great initiative of Prof. Irla, Lucia Huertas Diaz and Ker Sin Ng to organize a first retreat of a young section. More than 40 participants and two days of discussions about and beyond science, hopefully there will be a second event next year!
We would be happy to host a MSCA-PF in Aarhus. Please get in touch if you could imagine to work with us!
The A.P. Møller Fonden supports our project i-Tarmen, a collaboration with the TU Kaiserslautern, Germany.
We were cohosting a seminar with the Food&Biocluster with presentations by domesticlab, raw kombucha, Mycorena, Cellugy and members of the AU Industrial Biotechnology Section. Glad to see that there is such an enthusiastic food microbe community in Aarhus!
Glad to receive funding from the Brødrene Hartman Fonden and the Danish Dairy Foundation/Melkeafgiftsfonden to start the sister projects BioDairy and Bio2Lak in collaboration with Prof. Hanne Frøkiær, University of Copenhagen.
We spent a full day in Copenhagen doing nothing but talking microbes - very enjoyable.
Microbial Biotechnology celebrates 15 years, and we were invited to contribute a mini-review discussing how human gut microbes ferment dietary nutrients during the first year of life.
It developed into:
The full paper is available at: https://sfamjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1751-7915.14165
Eugenio Ingrebelli from the Czech University of Life Sciences joined the lab to work for 2 months with the FMT group. Welcome!
Does acrolein produced by microbe react with extracellular biomolecules? It does!
Update February 2023:
The paper become part of a virtual collection: 'Women in Toxicology' to Celebrate the International Day of Women and Girls in Science.
Find an interview with Clarissa here: https://axial.acs.org/biology-and-biological-chemistry/women-in-toxicology-interviews-part4
The FMT group is glad to host Mensure Elvan from the İzmir Institute of Technology, Turkey as part of the COST action SOURDOMICS (CA18101, Short Term Scientific Mission Grant) from August to October.
Finally published! Collaboration with Mari Sasaki and colleagues in Switzerland:
New paper in collaboration with Assist. Prof. Jianbo Zhang:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2772753X22000326?via%3Dihub
Four years in the making while three children were born by the first and last author, and collaborators from 3 and then 4 countries, CZ, CH, D and now DK.
available at
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmicb.2022.848490/full
The Functional Microbe Technology group published its first Aarhus paper that was a collaboration between the Departments of Biological and Chemical Engineering, Food Science and Public Health.
Available at:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1756464622001591
A happy FMT group! Clarissa Schwab became Research Program Leader of the NNF and Ascending Investigator in Food Biotechnology! BIOFUNC will start in September 2021
https://researchleaderprogramme.com/recipients/clarissa-schwab/
We always have openings for bachelor and master theses in food and gut biotechnology and microbial ecology. Please contact us for current projects.
If you are interested in joining as Erasmus student, feel free to write!
