I am interested in fungal molecular biology and soil ecology. My research field is mainly focused on fungi and bacteria. I aim to get a closer view on functions within deadwood and soils using transcriptomic and proteomic techniques. Hereby I focus on fungal enzymes mainly involved in the degradation of lignocellulose, which is the most abundand “biopolymer” on earth. I work also on genes involved in nitrogen and phosphate cycling in soil. A main question is how fungi shape with their enzymatic sets the soil environment and finally whole ecosystems. In which biogeochemical cycles are specific fungal groups involved, and when and “how much” are they active?
My recent interests are omics technologies, mainly NGS and bioinformatics. At Zittau we have a Molecular Lab including: IonS5 & IonChef, Covaris S2, ECHO Microscope, PCR and qPCR, Geldocumentation, Elektrophoresis. sterile Workbench, Oxfort Nanopore MinION.
Ion Torrent - semiconductor sequencing platform, retired 2017; successor: IonS5
