Institut für Systembiotechnologie

Excellent: Best Poster Award for Michael Kohlstedt

News July 12, 2019

Michael Kohlstedt was awarded with the best poster award at the HIPS Symposium, 27-28. July 2019 to highlight his innovative research on the pathogenic bacterium Pseudomonas aeruginosa.

Every year in Germany alone, thousands of people die from infections that are caused by this bacterium. Infections with P. aeruginosa can also result in severe chronic lung diseases. Together with Christoph Wittmann, Michael Kohlstedt has now developed a new method, which allows to resolve and track the core metabolic pathways of the dangerous pathogen completely. The method captures the so-called fluxome and, using an interdisciplinary approach of fermentation, mass spectrometric analysis and mathematical modeling, provides a detailed activity map of the bacterium’s metabolism: an important novel insight into the way of life of P. aeruginosa and towards therapeutic approaches to combat it better in the future. The paper is among the most popular articles in the Metabolic Engineering journal. The 10th HIPS Symposium was opened by the Prime Minister of the Saarland Tobias Hans and offered an exciting program around pathogenic microorganisms and their increasing resistance. At the same time, it and celebrated the 10th anniversary of the Helmholtz Center for Pharmaceutical Sciences (HIPS), an important partner also for our activities in the field at iSBio. Super, Michael - we are all very happy with you about your great award!