News

Here you will find important news about the group and information on talks and events.

20.10.2023

"Manchot study award" for Rahel and "Golden chalk" for Cathleen

There was plenty to celebrate at this year's graduation ceremony. Rahel was awarded the "Manchot study award" as one of this year's three best graduates in the Biochemistry program. After Cathleen had held the laudatory speech for her, she herself received the "Golden chalk" for the best teaching in the Master's program in 2023. Congratulations to both of them!


06.10.2023

The first conference of CRC 325 was a great success

Upon invitation of our doctoral students, who organized the CRC 325 conference "Light Induced Transformations (LIT)" fully independenly, national and international experts in the field of photochemistry came together in Regensburg. Andreas won the third poster prize this year. Congratulations!


25.07.2023

Retreat in the monastery Weltenburg

Together with the group of Prof. Johannes Buchner we spent three exciting days in the monastery in Weltenburg. In addition to scientific discussions, we also had fun while hiking, pub quizzing and early morning swimming in the Danube river.


15.07.2023

Students in the lab

So far, we have hosted eight B.Sc. and M.Sc. students in the Zeymer group in 2023. Euridice Harke supported us as a student assistant. Leon Sobotta was with us for his bachelor’s thesis. Robert Irle, Niklas Kahler, Fabain Gallo, Devan Horn, Chengyang Yao and Oksana Vasylenko have completed a research internship. Many thanks to all supervisors!


29.06.2023

Andreas wins poster awards at two conferences – congratulations!

In March, Andreas presented his work on artificial cerium-dependent photoenzymes at the "Novel Enzymes" conference in Greifswald and won a poster prize. Now he attended the "BIOTRANS" conference in La Rochelle together with Flo and won again a poster award. We are super proud!


20.05.2023

The team continues to grow!

We welcome three new members to the Zeymer group:

Jack O'Shea started as a postdoc back in March. He studied at University College London and did his PhD at the University of Edinburgh. In his project witin the TUM Innovation Network "NextGenDrugs" he wants to design cyclic peptides that influence protein-protein interactions. For this he will work closely with the group of Prof. Martin Zacharias.

After her successful master's thesis, Rahel Mühlhofer is now back as a doctoral student. She will work on the development of an in vivo selection system for the directed evolution of lanthanide-dependent enzymes.

Ruth Hillermann is our new lab technician. She previously worked at the Helmholtz Center and brings many years of laboratory experience. She will organize the lab and support different research projects.


05.05.2023

SFB1035 conference in Venice

We had an amazing time at the SFB1035 conference in Venice with great scientific talks by guest speakers and poster presentations by our PhD students.


19.04.2023

Joint publication with the Daumann lab

Andreas and Caro's collaboration with Helena Singer from Prof. Lena Daumann's group (LMU Munich) was published in Angewandte Chemie. Together with colleagues from the Helmholtz Center Dresden-Rossendorf, it was shown that lanthanide-dependent microorganisms also grow in the presence of radioactive actinides and incorporate these metal ions into their key metabolic enzymes.

Link to the article and cover art


30.03.2023

Benny und Cathleen in Leiden

The Lorentz Center at Leiden University (The Netherlands) hosted a workshop on "Photocatalysis - challenges and future perspectives". Benny gave a great talk about his PhD thesis.


02.03.2023

Recognition for excellent teaching

The Chemistry and Biochemistry students together with the dean of studies nominated Cathleen for a teaching award. She is very happy about this recognition.

TUM press release

 


22.12.2022

Thanks, Caro!

With a heavy hearts we say goodbye to Carolin Rulofs, who has been working as a lab technician in our group from the very beginning. With emotional words, Cathleen thanked Caro for her support in setting up the lab, organizing our move to the CPA, and her dedicated work for various research projects. Of course, a farewell gift from the group was not to be missed.

We wish Caro all the best in her new job and hope that she will visit us again soon!


13.12.2023

Christmas Party 2022

After exchanging Secret Santa gifts, we went for bowling…


15.11.2022

Cathleen in India

Cathleen was invited to attend the "Indo-German Week of the Young Researcher" in Delhi, where she met young PIs from Germany and India. The meeting wants to promote the exchange of ideas for future collaborative projects.  


11.10.2022

Official inauguration of the CPA building

We celebrated the official opening of the Center for Functional Protein Assemblies (CPA), our beautiful new building! Andreas and Rahel explained our research to the guests with a demo experiment. The president of TUM, Professor Hofmann, tried out multichannel pipette and plate reader...

TUM press release
Video about the CPA


01.10.2022

Welcome, Léa and Mustafa!

The group continues to grow: Léa Di Luzio is starting her PhD. She studied Chemistry at the University of Geneva (Switzerland). Her project is part of the International PhD Program "Photo-Electro-Catalysis", which is funded by the Elite Network of Bavaria. In collaboration with Prof. Oliver Reiser (Uni Regensburg), she wants to develop artificial copper enzymes for photoredox catalysis. Ghulam Mustafa is starting as a postdoc in the ERC project. He has a PhD from Heidelberg University and was a postdoc at the DKFZ Heidelberg and the Leibniz Institute for Food Systems Biology in Weihenstephan. He will support us with his expertise in MD simulations and computational modeling.


21.09.2022

A group trip to the "Oktoberfest"

Cheers!


21.09.2022

Hannah and Rahel are starting their M.Sc. theses

Hannah Kugler and Rahel Mühlhofer join the group for their M.Sc. theses. They both studied Biochemistry at TUM and are supervised by Benny and Flo. We wish you lots of fun with your projects!


16.08.2022

Chalk talks, beer & BBQ

Together with the groups of Dr. Terry Hadlington, Dr. Dominik Bucher, Dr. Golo Storch, and Dr. Dominik Halter we organized a barbecue with short scientific talks in the CPA courtyard. A great opportunity to get to know the other junior groups and their exciting research projects...


05.07.2022

Summer party of the Chemistry department

We joined forces with the Sieber and Buchner groups to participate in the soccer tournament...


04.07.2022

We welcome Finn, Roman and Manuel...

Mathias ('Finn') Heien and Roman Graf are starting their research internships. They are supervised by Flo and Robert. Manuel Seiler is an apprentice and will spend some months of his third year in our lab. Caro will teach him all the tricks of protein purification. We wish you a good time in our team!


14.06.2022

Laser tag with the Daumann lab

Great fun at the joint group event with Prof. Lena Daumann and her team from LMU Munich!


01.05.2022

Congratulations, Flo!

Florian Leiß-Maier has received a PhD fellowship from the German National Academic Foundation. The two-year funding for his dissertation project starts today.


15.03.2022

Three student are starting their research internships

Hannes Ehlert, Berkay Berk und Lucas Kollwitz are joining our team for 4-8 weeks. They will be supervised by Flo, Benny, and Paula, respectively.


24.02.2022

A group hike in the snow...

We went snowshoeing in Lenggries!


01.02.2022

Our team is growing...

We welcome three new members in our group! Srishti Ballabh Bahukhandi and Robert Klassen are starting a PhD and Konstantin Plöchl joins us for his M.Sc. thesis.

Srishti studied Chemistry at Delhi University and Amity University in India. She has already gained experience in chemical photoredox catalysis during her time at RWTH Aachen. In her PhD thesis, she will work on photoenzymatic reactions within the SFB/Transregio 325.

Robert studied Biochemistry in Ulm and Halle and comes with a lot of practical experience in protein engineering. He will work on artificial metalloenzymes within the TUM Innovation Network "RISE".

Konstantin is a Chemistry student at TUM. In his M.Sc. thesis, he wants to optimize a natural redox enzyme for a new activity. Andreas will be his supervisor.

We wish you all a good start in the Zeymer group and a lot of fun and success with your projects!


10.01.2022

Great news: Cathleen got an ERC Starting Grant!

We are very happy to announce that our project "PhotoLanZyme" (Artificial Lanthanide Enzymes for Selective Photocatalysis) will be funded by an ERC Starting Grant of € 1.5 million!

Read more in this TUM press release.

Congratulations to all the other awardees and their exciting projects, which can be found here.


01.11.2021

Congratulations, Benny!

Benedikt Boesen receives a prestigious Kekulé fellowship from the "Fonds der Chemischen Industrie" for his PhD project.


01.11.2021

Meet our research project students...

Nikolas Müller, Hannah Kugler, Marius Hofberger and Quirin Fichtner joined our group for a research project this fall. Many thanks to Flo and Benny for the great supervision!


01.08.2021

Paula starts her PhD

We warmly welcome Paula Wagner Ega to our group. Paula studied Biotechnology at the "Tecnológico de Monterrey" in Mexico for her B.Sc. degree and at Lund University in Sweden for her M.Sc. degree. Her master's thesis focused on the enzymatic degradation of PET. In her PhD, she will now investigate the relationship between conformational dynamics and function based on an artificial metalloenzyme. Her project is integrated in the Collaborative Research Center 1035. Welcome, Paula, and have a good start at TUM!


14.06.2021

We welcome Maria and Anna to the group!

Maria Weyh is joining us for her M.Sc. thesis on enzymatic photocatalysis. Anna Heider is starting her B.Sc. thesis and will work on an artificial metalloenzyme.


25.05.2021

We are part of a new collaborative research center on photocatalysis!

The DFG is funding the CRC/Transregio CRC325 "Assembly-controlled chemical photocatalysis", for which we contribute one project. Together with research groups from TUM, Uni Regensburg, Uni Leipzig and LMU Munich we will work on exciting topics in photocatalysis. The project in our lab will deal with light-induced reactions in proteins. There will be a PhD position available!

 


15.04.2021

Benedikt starts his PhD

We are very happy to welcome Benedikt Boesen as a new PhD student in the group. Benedikt studied Biochemistry in Düsseldorf and Berlin and completed his MSc thesis in the lab of Prof. Roderich Süssmuth at TU Berlin. In his PhD project, he will now focus on enzymatic photocatalysis, working closely together with Prof. Thorsten Bach's group. Welcome, Benedikt! We wish you a good start at TUM!


14.04.2021

We have moved into our new labs!

This week our group moved into beautiful new labs in the Center for Functional Protein Assemblies (CPA)!


01.04.2021

No April fool: We are joining SFB1035!

The DFG has accepted our project proposal and we are now part of the collaborative research center SFB1035 (Control of protein function by conformational switching)!


15.03.2021

Lisa starts her M.Sc. thesis

We welcome Lisa Klimper to the team. She joins us for her M.Sc. thesis. Lisa is studying Biochemistry at TUM and will spend the next 6 months in our group. Her project focuses on copper-binding de novo proteins, which we want to turn into novel enzymes.


12.03.2021

A week of protein production

Helena Singer from LMU has visited our lab this week. She is a PhD student in the group of our collaboration partner Prof. Lena Daumann. In her PhD project, she focuses on the exciting biochemistry of the f-block elements, whose role in biology is not yet fully understood. During her visit, Helena produced and purified some of our metal-binding de novo proteins together with Carolin and will soon analyze them in more detail.


26.02.2021

Our review in "Protein Engineering, Design & Selection" is online!

The article "Design and engineering of artificial metalloproteins: from de novo metal coordination to catalysis" is freely available here ! We discuss challanges and recent success stories of metalloprotein design...


01.02.2021

Flo starts his PhD in the Zeymer group

We welcome Florian Leiß-Maier to the team. He is the first PhD student of the Zeymer group at TUM. Flo studied Biochemistry at TUM and completed his M.Sc. thesis in the lab of Prof. Kathrin Lang. In his PhD project, he aims to develop artificial metalloenzymes based on de novo designed protein scaffolds.
Many thanks to the German Research Foundation (DFG) for funding this work!

Flo, we wish you fun and success with your work! Welcome to the group!


18.01.2021

Welcome Christina

The new year has just begun and we are pleased to welcome our next student for a research project. Even in Corona times we make it possible to train students in the lab, while following all the rules, of course. For the next 8 weeks, biochemistry student Christina Horstmann will support Andreas in our adventures with enzymes. She will follow up on the results of our last two project students and hopefully learn a lot about enzymology and organic synthesis.


01.01.2021

Thieme Chemistry Journals Award 2021

Cathleen receives the Thieme Chemistry Journals Award 2021! We are very happy about this recognition and congratulate all other awardees.


17.11.2020

The first Zeymer lab publication

The first publication of the Zeymer group is now available online. In collaboration with the group of David Baker (Insitute of Protein Design, Seattle), we built a de novo metalloprotein that binds lanthanides with very high affinity. The symmetric de novo TIM barrel protein has a large internal cavity, which makes it an amazing scaffold to engineer novel enzymes! We started this work at ETH Zurich and now continue it here at TUM.

Many thanks to everybody involved in this project!
The exciting results can be read in PNAS.


02.11.2020

Welcome Laura

Laura Eck, a TUM chemistry student, started her lab rotation with us this week. We are very excited that she will support our work in the field of biocatalysis with metalloenzymes in the coming weeks.

Dear Laura, we would like to welcome you and wish you an enjoyable and successful time!


12.10.2020

Our first student

Chemistry student Anita Schiller is joining us for a lab rotation and we have thus started our teaching activities! In her project, Anita will support our postdoc Andreas in his research on enzymatic photocatalysis, bringing some light into the dark autumn and winter weeks.

We wish her an exciting and successful time in our group!


03.08.2020

Welcome Andreas

Our postdoc Andreas has now also moved from Zurich to Munich. Good timing, because this way he could immediately follow the installation of the brand new UHPLC. Welcome to the TUM, Andreas!


29.05.2020

It looks like Christmas

Packages everywhere... The first shipments of laboratory equipment have arrived! Now we can start unpacking and setting up the laboratory. Our lab technician Caro is helping Cathleen a lot.


02.05.2020

A warm welcome

The Department of Chemistry warmly welcomed Cathleen on her first day as assistant professor at TUM. Flowers, chocolate and fruit were already waiting for her in the office.

We can now start building up the laboratory and are looking curiously into the future.