Luca Schulz receives 2024 Birnstiel Award
The MPI-TM postdoc is one of six young researchers to receive the award.
Today, the six prizewinners of this year's International Birnstiel Prize for molecular biology dissertations were announced. Among them is Luca Schulz, who completed his doctoral thesis in the research group of Tobias Erb at the Max-Planck-Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology in Marburg, Germany.
Dr. Luca Schulz carries out research at the interface of evolutionary biology and biochemistry: he investigates how the proteins that play a key role in photosynthesis – the process that enables photosynthetic organisms to synthesize valuable building blocks from atmospheric CO2 and sunlight – have evolved over the course of evolution. Without the work of these biocatalysts, life would not be possible. At the same time, they are an important starting point for future sustainable processes of CO2 fixation.
As part of an international collaboration, Luca Schulz experimentally re-traced the evolution of these biocatalysts to shed light on the mechanisms that nature uses to improve them. To this end, Luca Schulz used computer algorithms to resurrect long-extinct variants of these catalysts and then biochemically characterized their subsequent evolution. He found that the specialization of the central photosynthetic enzyme, Rubisco, followed different evolutionary principles than previously thought. A new subunit of the enzyme allowed it to tolerate mutations that would otherwise have been lethal, allowing it to become better at capturing CO2 from air. This finding is of great interest for the development of new synthetic biocatalysts.
"My work, which started as pure basic research, has now moved into research in which we deliberately use evolution in the laboratory to engineer proteins. I am very pleased to receive this award, which shows me that this research is being noticed and encourages me to continue in this direction," says Luca Schulz. He is currently working as a postdoctoral researcher at The University of Manchester, where he applies the mechanisms of natural evolution to improve enzymatic catalysts for the synthesis of value-added compounds.
The six prizewinners have been selected from 105 nominations from around the world. As in previous years, the selection committee emphasized the extraordinary quality of the nominations. This makes the International Birnstiel Prize for doctoral students in molecular biosciences one of the most highly competitive research prizes for students.
The awardees will receive a certificate, a trophy and prize money of €2,000 at a ceremony in Vienna on November 6, 2024. Any academic institution worldwide is eligible to submit nominations, but only one candidate per institution or doctoral program can be awarded. The call for nominations is issued each year in May via the IMP website, social media and a dedicated campaign.
Dr. Luca Schulz studied biology at the University of Marburg (Germany) and then biological chemistry at ETH Zurich (Switzerland). After that, he joined the MPI for Terrestrial Microbiology in Marburg. Luca is currently a postdoc at the University of Manchester. Among other honors, he has been awarded the PhD Prize of the German Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and is an EMBO postdoc fellow.
