Regulation of central metabolism in Firmicutes and acetic acid bacteria

Bacterial metabolism is one of the cornerstones of the white biotechnology. This is due to the very high metabolic turnover rates of prokaryotes as well as their comparably simple regulatory networks, genomes and the amazing diversity of their biochemistry.

Our lab is interested in the regulation of the central metabolism of several biotechnologically relevant members of the Firmicutes and acetic acid bacteria.

We investigate the ethanol production by the homoacetogenic Clostridium ljungdahlii, the regulation of solvent formation in solventogenic Clostridia, certain aspects of the central metabolism of Bacillus licheniformis, the metabolism of Gluconobacter oxydans and the metagenome of acetic acid bacteria.

Furthermore we use bioinformatics to implement new concepts for the comparison of bacterial genomes using Clostridium difficile as an example.