Discovery of the first fractal molecule in nature

‘We stumbled on this structure completely by accident and almost couldn’t believe what we saw when we first took images of it using an electron microscope’

12-Apr-2024 - Snowflakes, fern leaves, romanesco cauliflower heads: many structures in nature have a certain regularity. Their individual parts resemble the shape of the whole structure. Such shapes, which repeat from the largest to the smallest, are called fractals. But regular fractals that match almost ...

A new path to active ingredient diversity

26-Mar-2024 - Many important drugs, such as antibiotics and cancer drugs, are derived from natural substances from bacteria. The bacterial enzymes that produce these active ingredients are considered ideal tools for synthetic biology due to their modular design. By researching protein evolution, a team led by ...

Powering Nitrogenases: New ways for sustainable fertiliser production

New targets for improving biocatalysts

26-Feb-2024 - Nitrogenases are considered promising candidates for the sustainable enzymatic production of ammonia and carbon compounds. One bottleneck in this complex process, the supply of electrons to the enzymes, has remained a mystery until now. Now a team at the Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial ...

Tobias Erb receives the Leibniz Award 2024

Innovative, interdisciplinary research approach opens up new possibilities for developing technologies to address the global climate crisis

11-Dec-2023 - Prof. Dr. Tobias Erb, Director at the Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology and Professor at the University of Marburg, has been awarded the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize by the German Research Foundation (DFG). The Leibniz Prize is the most important research award in Germany and ...

The enzyme with the iron heart

Results could lead to new biocatalysts for sustainable biotechnology

11-Dec-2023 - Nitrogenases are the only enzymes capable of reducing atmospheric nitrogen to bioavailable nitrogen (ammonia), a process essential for all life on Earth. Using cryogenic electron microscopy, researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology in Marburg, Germany, have now solved ...

With formic acid towards CO₂ neutrality

Researchers develop a new method for the sustainable use of CO₂

16-May-2023 - New synthetic metabolic pathways for CO2 fixation could not only help to reduce the CO2 content of the atmosphere, but also replace conventional chemical manufacturing processes for pharmaceuticals and active ingredients with carbon-neutral, biological processes. A new study demonstrates a ...

Back to the Future of Photosynthesis

Scientific journeys back in time can provide invaluable insights for the future

17-Oct-2022 - The central biocatalyst in Photosynthesis, Rubisco, is the most abundant enzyme on earth. But how did Rubisco evolve, and how did it adapt to environmental changes during Earth’s history? By reconstructing billion-year-old enzymes, a team of Max Planck Researchers has deciphered one of the key ...

Future Insight Prize of € 1 Million Awarded to Tobias Erb

Prizewinner from the Max Planck Institute in Marburg, Germany is working on capturing carbon dioxide and converting it into new chemical building blocks using biocatalysts

15-Jul-2022 - Merck announced the winner of the 2022 Future Insight Prize in the category of “Energy”. The €1million prize was awarded at the “Curious2022 – Future Insight” scientific conference in Darmstadt, Germany, to Professor Tobias Erb (43), Director at the Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial ...

How a soil microbe could rev up artificial photosynthesis

The secret is an enzyme that “juggles” reaction ingredients

04-May-2022 - Plants rely on a process called carbon fixation – turning carbon dioxide from the air into carbon-rich biomolecules ­– for their very existence. That’s the whole point of photosynthesis, and a cornerstone of the vast interlocking system that cycles carbon through plants, animals, microbes and the ...

Turning harmful carbon dioxide into useful chemicals

Inspired by nature: Electro-biocatalytic CO₂ fixing replaces fossil resources

14-Jan-2022 - Making important raw materials for fine chemicals out of carbon dioxide really works. As part of the Max Planck collaborative project eBioCO2n, a team of researchers from Fraunhofer IGB have successfully performed a first ever fixation of CO2 via a multi-enzyme enzyme reaction driven by ...