Vera Meyer

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Vera Meyer (* 1970 in Hoyerswerda ) is a German biotechnologist and professor at the Technical University of Berlin , where she heads the Department of Applied and Molecular Microbiology.

Life

Vera Meyer studied biotechnology at the University of Sofia (Bulgaria) and the Technical University of Berlin , where she graduated in 1996 with a degree in biotechnology. In 2001 the doctorate to Dr.-Ing. at the Department of Microbiology and Genetics at the Institute for Biotechnology at the TU Berlin. In the following years, from 2002 to 2008, she worked there as a scientific assistant and laboratory manager and completed her habilitation in 2008 in microbiology and genetics.

As a visiting scholar, her research took her to London in 2003, to the Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine . From 2005 to 2006 she went to Leiden University in the Netherlands as a visiting scholar for another year . She received the Dechema University Teacher Award in 2005. In 2008, she took on an assistant professorship for three years at the University of Leiden for molecular microbiology and biotechnology. Since 2011 she has been a professor at the Institute for Biotechnology at TU Berlin and heads the Applied and Molecular Microbiology department. Her scientific work in the field of fungal biotechnology has been published in more than 90 specialist publications (as of May 2019).

Vera Meyer has also worked as a visual artist under the pseudonym V. meer since 2008. Her focus was initially on painting and graphics, but since 2013 she has increasingly focused on sculpture and object art. The scientific work with mushrooms in microbiology inspired her to combine chance finds such as forest mushrooms, wood and scrap metal in the sense of the objet trouvé . Vera Meyer's works can be grouped into categories, which at the same time describe the development of her artistic path: painterly - graphic - plastic - biological. Vera Meyer does not distinguish between a scientific and an artistic view, but rather wants to use art to raise awareness of the potential of mushrooms for biotechnology and for a sustainable bioeconomy.

science

Research into the Aspergillus niger cell factory has been a focus of Vera Meyer's scientific work for many years. Her aim is to use Aspergillus niger more effectively for the production of proteins and enzymes in terms of a sustainable bioeconomy. Meyer's scientific team at the TU Berlin pursues a holistic approach, combining methods from the field of synthetic biology and systems biology . Genetic engineering methods, such as CRISPR-Cas9 and the generation of large amounts of omics data for Aspergillus niger , are used to predict gene functions and gene regulation networks. This enabled Vera Meyer's team to not only optimize Aspergillus niger as a cell factory for proteins, but also to establish it for the first time for drugs (European Patent EP 3 119 900 B1). The synthesis of systems biology and synthetic biology is so far new scientific territory. The long-term goal is to enable the transition from a descriptive to a predictive biology.

Act

Vera Meyer is committed to involving citizen scientists in research, for example in the Mind the Fungi! Project launched in 2018 . . In this project, the Institute for Biotechnology, together with Berlin citizens, artists and designers, is investigating the potential of tree fungi for a world based on renewable raw materials. She also advocates a paradigm shift in scientific publications and calls for a culture of open access . In 2014 Vera Meyer founded the first open access journal in the field of fungal biology and biotechnology , for which she has been co-editor since then. She is the spokesperson for the international Eurofung network and is particularly committed to promoting the development of new antibiotics that can counter the spreading, multi-resistant germs . The results of a think tank she organized in Berlin on this topic were published as a white paper in the open access journal Fungal Biology and Biotechnology .

Other activities and memberships

  • Founding member and scientific advisor of the Dutch biotechnology company HiTeXacoat
  • Member of the Aspergillus Genomes Research Policy Committee
  • Member of the Dechema specialist group systems biology and synthetic biology
  • Spokeswoman for the Fungal Biology and Biotechnology Section of the Association for General and Applied Microbiology (VAAM)

Publications (selection)

  • Fungal Gene Expression on Demand: an Inducible, Tunable, and Metabolism-Independent Expression System for Aspergillus niger (American Society for Microbiology, 2011)
  • David versus Goliath - Development of New Antifungal Drugs and Strategies (2013)
  • Morphological form finding in hyphae mushrooms (2013)
  • The beauty and the morbid: fungi as source of inspiration in contemporary art (2016)
  • Tet-on, or Tet-off, that is the question: Advanced conditional gene expression in Aspergillus (Science Direct / Fungal Genetics and Biology, 2016)
  • Openness and visibility of fungal bio (techno) logy (2017)
  • Vita activa in biotechnology: what we do with fungi and what fungi do with us (2017)
  • How a fungus shapes biotechnology: 100 years of Aspergillus niger research (2018)
  • Updating genome annotation for the microbial cell factory Aspergillus niger using gene co-expression network (Oxford Academic, Nucleic Acids Research, 2018)
  • Merging science and art through fungi (2019)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ DECHEMA | Society for Chemical Technology and Biotechnology. Accessed June 24, 2019 .
  2. ↑ Research Group Biotechnology: Home. Retrieved June 24, 2019 .
  3. ↑ ORCID. Retrieved June 24, 2019 .
  4. ↑ Maren Bulmahn: See the invisible. www.gdch.de/nachrichten, April 2019, accessed on June 24, 2019 .
  5. ↑ Kathrin Rübberdt: Directing the gaze to the invisible: How science and art flow together. In: DECHEMA eV January 21, 2019, accessed on July 5, 2019 .
  6. ↑ artlaboratory-berlin.org Mind the Fungi. Retrieved June 24, 2019 .
  7. ↑ Creating knowledge and making it freely accessible - Open Access Policy of the TU Berlin adopted | Publishing at the TU Berlin. Retrieved June 24, 2019 .
  8. ^ Fungal Biology and Biotechnology. Retrieved June 24, 2019 .
  9. ↑ Home. Retrieved June 24, 2019 .
  10. ↑ Vera Meyer, Mikael R. Andersen, Axel A. Brakhage, Gerhard H. Braus, Mark X. Caddick, Timothy C. Cairns, Ronald P. de Vries, Thomas Haarmann, Kim Hansen, Christiane Hertz-Fowler, Sven Krappmann, Uffe H. Mortensen, Miguel A. Peñalva, Arthur FJ Ram and Ritchie M. Head: Current challenges of research on filamentous fungi in relation to human welfare and a sustainable bio-economy. Fungal Biology and Biotechnology, August 31, 2016, accessed June 24, 2019 .
  11. ↑ HTX - HiTeXacoat. Retrieved June 24, 2019 .
  12. ^ Aspergillus Genomes Research Policy Committee. Retrieved June 24, 2019 .
  13. ↑ Home / VAAM. Retrieved June 24, 2019 .
  14. ↑ Arthur FJ Ram, Cees AMJJ van den Hondel, Mark Arentshorst, Janneke van Gent, Franziska Wanka: Fungal Gene Expression on Demand: an Inducible, Tunable, and Metabolism-Independent Expression System for Aspergillus niger . In: Applied and Environmental Microbiology . tape 77 , no. 9 , May 1, 2011, ISSN  0099-2240 , p. 2975–2983 , doi : 10.1128 / AEM.02740-10 , PMID 21378046 ( asm.org [accessed June 24, 2019]).
  15. ↑ Dr. Dirk Müller-Hagen and Prof. Dr. Vera Meyer: David versus Goliath - Development of new antifungal agents and strategies. Applied and Molecular Microbiology, Technische Universität Berlin, 2013, accessed on June 4, 2019 .
  16. ↑ Vera Meyer: Morphological Form-Finding in Hyphae Mushrooms - Same or Different? In: BIOspectrum . tape 19 , no. 5 , September 1, 2013, ISSN  1868-6249 , p. 489-491 , doi : 10.1007 / s12268-013-0342-9 .
  17. ^ Corrado Nai and Vera Meyer: The beauty and the morbid: fungi as source of inspiration in contemporary art. Fungal Biology and Biotechnology, November 29, 2016, accessed June 24, 2019 .
  18. ↑ Franziska Wanka, Timothy Cairns, Simon Boecker, Christian Berens, Anna Happel, Xiaomei Zheng, Jibin Sund, Sven Krappmann, Vera Meyer: Tet-on, or Tet-off, that is the question: Advanced conditional gene expression in Aspergillus. Science Direct / Fungal Genetics and Biology, April 2016, accessed June 24, 2019 .
  19. ↑ Vera Meyer, Corrado Nai, Alexander Idnurm: Openness and visibility of fungal bio (techno) logy . In: Fungal Biology and Biotechnology . tape 4 , no. 1 , October 23, 2017, ISSN  2054-3085 , p. 9 , doi : 10.1186 / s40694-017-0038-x .
  20. ↑ Martin Weinhold, Edeltraud Mast-Gerlach and Vera Meyer: Vita activa in biotechnology: what we do with fungi and what fungi do with us. Fungal Biology and Biotechnology, December 2017, accessed June 24, 2019 .
  21. ↑ Timothy C. Cairns, Corrado Nai and Vera Meyer: How a fungus shapes biotechnology: 100 years of Aspergillus niger research. Fungal Biology and Biotechnology, May 24, 2018, accessed June 24, 2019 .
  22. ^ V. Meyer, TC Cairns, T. Schütze, N. Paege, B. Nitsche: Updating genome annotation for the microbial cell factory Aspergillus niger using gene co-expression networks . In: Nucleic Acids Research . tape 47 , no. 2 , January 25, 2019, ISSN  0305-1048 , p. 559-569 , doi : 10.1093 / nar / gky1183 ( oup.com [accessed June 24, 2019]).
  23. ↑ Vera Meyer: Merging science and art through fungi. Fungal Biology and Biotechnology, April 26, 2019, accessed June 24, 2019 .
personal data
SURNAME Meyer, Vera
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German biotechnologist and university professor for applied and molecular microbiology
DATE OF BIRTH 1970
PLACE OF BIRTH Hoyerswerda , district Hoyerswerda , the district Cottbus , DDR