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For the characterization of new bioactive metabolites from tropical Basidiomycetes, a division of fungi, Dr Clara Chepkirui of the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI) in Brunswick was awarded this year’s DECHEMA-Doktorandenpreis für Naturstoff-Forschung. While doing her doctorate in the HZI department Microbial Drugs, headed by Prof Marc Stadler, Chepkirui discovered the microporenic acids, which proved effective against bacterial biofilms.

He was one of the most versatile German researchers and a popular representative of science. Manfred Eigen, winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry and one of the founders of the Gesellschaft für Biotechnologische Forschung in Braunschweig – today the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI). Manfred Eigen died on 6 February, 2019, at the age of 91.

Prof Markus Cornberg, a medical doctor by training, is the new Clinical Director of the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI) in Braunschweig. Cornberg will also become director of the Centre for Individualised Infection Medicine (CiiM), a collaboration of the HZI and the Hannover Medical School (MHH). He is the successor to Prof Michael Manns, who resigned from both positions due to his inauguration as president of the MHH effective 1 January 2019.

Many common antibiotics are increasingly losing their effectiveness against multi-resistant pathogens, which are becoming ever more prevalent. Bacteria use natural means to acquire mechanisms that protect them from harmful substances. For instance against the agent albicidin: Harmful Gram-negative bacteria possess a protein that binds and inactivates albicidin. The underlying resistance mechanism has been investigated at atomic resolution by scientists from the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI) and the associated Helmholtz Institute for Pharmaceutical Research Saarland (HIPS). The scientists discovered that this protein not only binds the antibiotic, but also promotes its chemical modification. Concurrently, it promotes its own production such that it can inactivate albicidin even more efficiently. The results of this study have been published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

The molecular biologist Dr Katherine Beckham has received the 2018 Jürgen Wehland Award. She is a scientist at the Hamburg branch of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL), working in the research department run by Prof Matthias Wilmanns. Beckham is investigating special molecular tools of bacterial pathogens, through which germs deliver infectious proteins to the cells of its host. The Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI) in Braunschweig has granted the Jürgen Wehland Award, endowed with 5000 euros, for the seventh time, thus honouring junior researchers doing important work in infection research.

For researchers like Chase Beisel, the cryptic term CRISPR-Cas is much more than the sophisticated system used by bacteria to defend themselves against virus attacks: It is home to countless genetic engineering possibilities that Beisel hopes to exploit. His goal is to understand the diversity of CRISPR-Cas systems in order to be able to use them against genetic diseases or multi-resistant pathogens, for example. The social dimension of his research plays a decisive role for him: “CRISPR is a wonderful example of basic research that has already led to something that has enormous effects on society,” he says. “However, we must never neglect social exchange about gene-editing technologies such as CRISPR, because in the end our work is useless if society is not prepared to accept it.”