Microbial Strain Collection

Bacterial secondary metabolites offer great potential for the discovery and development of leads in anti-infective research. One of the most promising ways for generating novel antibiotic scaffolds is the biodiversity guided expansion of existing microbial strain collections at the HZI. Although intensively studied, the actinomycetes, and the much less analyzed myxobacteria, are far from being exhausted as resources of novel chemistry. In fact, recent research has shown their enormous potential for future discoveries.

Leader

Prof Dr Joachim Wink

Two promising ways towards finding novel anti-infective are to exploit the biodiversity of microorganisms and to use microbiology based approaches to better exploit their biosynthetic potential.

Joachim Wink

Joachim Wink studied biology at Frankfurt University and obtained his PhD at the institute of molecular biology in 1985 on “Modifications of the protein pattern of Bacillus subtilis during sporulation”. In the same year he moved to the Höchst AG where he started his business career in the core research functions, department of biotechnology as head of a laboratory. From 1992 to 2012 he continued his worked in the pharmaceutical research of the Höchst AG and its following companies Aventis and Sanofi.

During these more than 27 years in the industry he was responsible for the microbial strain collection in natural product research and was specialized in isolation, cultivation and characterization of Actinobacteria and Myxobacteria. In 2004 he completed his habilitation dissertation at the Technische Universität Braunschweig on “The taxonomy of secondary metabolite producing Actinomycetes” in cooperation with the DSMZ.

Since 2012 Joachim Wink is doing his research at the HZI and in 2013 he became head of the new work group microbial strain collection, he also holds lectures at the TU Braunschweig in biology of metabolite producing microorganisms.

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