Home Max Planck Research Groups Departments Max Planck Research Groups Emmy Noether Research Group Department-independent Research Groups Emerita & Emeriti Max Planck Fellows Former Research Group Leaders Research Cooperations Max Planck Research Groups The global energy and climate crisis challenges us to develop more efficient strategies and innovative solutions to harness solar energy.Our group combines computational design and directed evolution to create photoenzymes for solar-driven carbon capture, electricity production, and nitrogen fixation. Cells house a vast diversity of proteins that seem intricately tuned to their functions. Our lab studies how evolution shaped this diversity. We use ancestral sequence reconstruction to resurrect long extinct protein complexes to study their structure and function with advanced techniques. RNA is basically built from only four different nucleotides. However, over 160 modifications are known to affect its stability and function. Our lab studies epitranscriptomics based on NAD-capped RNAs in bacteria, exploring redox and gene regulation using diverse biochemical and bioinformatic methods. How did life emerge from non-life? How did cells develop from a geochemical environment? Our lab investigates processes where geochemistry and biochemistry transition into each other, using imaging, chemical, biochemical, and geochemical methods
