DrSonja Billerbeck
Associate Professor
Department of Bioengineering - Faculty of Engineering
Orcid identifier0000-0002-3092-578X (opens in a new tab)
- Associate ProfessorDepartment of Bioengineering - Faculty of Engineering
RESEARCH
We use a combination of synthetic biology, genome engineering, protein engineering and environmental microbiology to turn micobial functions into applications.
We specifically focus on tackling fungal diseases in human health, food and agriculture and on delivering tools for non-model microbes to make their capabilities available for future food production.
Our research program consists of three research lines:
(1) we are building a pipeline for accessing, engineering, and applying the yeast toxicome – antifungal proteins secreted by wild yeast – in order to turn them into viable antifungal agents for food protection, as biocontrol measures and for therapeutic applications in human health.
(2) we dissect the molecular functioning of fungal GPCRs to understand their role in how fungi sense their environment with the goal to use these GPCRs as synthetic biology tools for molecular sensing and explore them as future antifungal drug targets.
(3) we use hydrogen oxidizing bacteria to produce food proteins from carbon dioxide and electricity alone, a potentially agriculture-free alternative protein source.
More information can be found on the lab website at www.billerbecklab.com.
We specifically focus on tackling fungal diseases in human health, food and agriculture and on delivering tools for non-model microbes to make their capabilities available for future food production.
Our research program consists of three research lines:
(1) we are building a pipeline for accessing, engineering, and applying the yeast toxicome – antifungal proteins secreted by wild yeast – in order to turn them into viable antifungal agents for food protection, as biocontrol measures and for therapeutic applications in human health.
(2) we dissect the molecular functioning of fungal GPCRs to understand their role in how fungi sense their environment with the goal to use these GPCRs as synthetic biology tools for molecular sensing and explore them as future antifungal drug targets.
(3) we use hydrogen oxidizing bacteria to produce food proteins from carbon dioxide and electricity alone, a potentially agriculture-free alternative protein source.
More information can be found on the lab website at www.billerbecklab.com.