M. Sc. Gerrich Behrendt

I engineer microbes.

My focus is on the development and application of genetic tools for metabolic engineering.

During my PhD I focused on the development of Zymo-Parts, a Golden Gate Modular Cloning toolbox (https://doi.org/10.1021/acssynbio.2c00428). The toolbox was made for the engineering of Zymomonas mobilis, a promising chassis for bulk chemical production. We extended the toolbox substantially (https://doi.org/10.1111/1751-7915.14381) and put it to work (https://doi.org/10.1186/s12934-024-02419-9).

The toolbox can also be utilized for the engineering of other microbes. In E. coli we systematically characterized an array of different promoters for anaerobic induction using Zymo-Parts (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ymben.2023.04.006).

Inside our group wet and dry lab often collaborate. An example is my shared publication with Dr. Sebastián Espinel Ríos. He modeled the implications of ATP-wasting for lactic acid production in E. coli and we tested the model in a dynamic optogenetic optimization (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.procbio.2024.04.032).

Currently I am working on investigating and engineering mainly Z. mobilis and E. coli, but I am very curious about non-conventional microbes and specifically on the design of shuttle and broad host range vectors to enable their genetic manipulation.