News

On August 18th, 2022 Anam Liaqat successfully defended her PhD on "Artificial Evolution of Nucleic Acid Catalysts and their Use for Studying RNA". Congratulations and all best wishes for a bright future!

Die Kristallstruktur des Methyltransferase-Ribozyms MTR1 zeigt die erstaunliche Architektur der Bindungsstasche für den Cofaktor und einen unerwarteten Mechanismus der Methylgruppenübertragung.

On February 25th, 2022 Julia Dietzsch successfully defended her PhD on "Nucleic acid-mediated fluorescence activation and chromophore assembly". Congratulations and all best wishes for a bright future!

On October 18th, 2021 Aaron Siewert successfully defended his PhD on "Nucleotide Analogs as Rigid Spin Labels for DNA and RNA". Congratulations and all best wishes for a bright future!

Julia Dietzsch was awarded a poster prize at the X. Meeting on Nucleic Acid Chemistry (Nucleinsäurechemie-Treffen) for her poster presentation “Dipolar interactions of merocyanine barbiturate nucleoside analogs guided by double helix conformations”. Congratulations for this award!

Congratulations! Farbod received the GDCh Förderpreis Biochemie 2021 for his dissertation entitled “Development, characterization, and application of RNA catalysts for in situ labelling of target RNA molecules”. We are proud of you!

Thanks to Carolin for her delicious contribution to the Inaugural RNA Society Baking Competition.

The structure of the fluorogenic Chili RNA aptamer and its mechanism of fluorescence activation by excited state proton transfer to the RNA are now reported in Nature Communications.

On March 26th, 2021 Mateusz Mieczkowski successfully defended his PhD on "Structural investigations of functional nucleic acids". Congratulations and all best wishes for a bright future!

On the track of evolution: Our discovery of the first methyltransferase ribozyme - a catalytically active RNA that specifically attaches methyl groups to other RNAs - was recently published in "Nature".

RSC Chemical Biology was launched in 2020 and is dedicated to publishing and disseminating the most exceptionally significant, breakthrough research at the interface of chemistry and biology.

Dr. Christian Steinmetzger and Dr. Mohammad (Farbod) Ghaem Maghami

We wish them both a successful future!

On July 10, 2020 we celebrated our two excellent graduates Christian and Farbod and the 3rd anniversary of our group joining the Institute of Organic Chemistry in Würzburg. It was a great evening hike to the Castle of Würzburg.

On July 6, 2020 Farbod successfully defended his PhD thesis. The title of his work is "Development, characterization, and application of RNA catalysts for in situ labeling of target RNA molecules". Congratulations! Farbod will continue working with us as a postdoctoral researcher on RNA catalysts. We wish him a lot of success in his further career!

On July 3, 2020 Christian Steinmetzer successfully defended his PhD thesis. The title of his work is "Fluorogenic aptamers and fluorescent nucleoside analogs as probes for RNA structure and function". Congratulations! Christian will move to Sweden for postdoctoral research at the Karolinska Institute. We wish him a lot of success and a great time!