Our goal is to leverage light-sensitive unnatural amino acids as synthetic tools for enzymology and application-based enzyme engineering. By this enzyme activity can be spatio-temporally controlled by light. It is our vision that the lightsensitive enzymes generated in this process, named photoxenases, will contribute to the scientific progressin fundamental enzyme studies and applications such as cell research and red or white biotechnology. This vision motivates us to work closely together as a cohesive team.
Together with Valentina Piano (Cologne) and Yury Bykov (Kaiserslautern), we hosted the “From Bench to Leadership” workshop organized by the “Young Investigators” group of the Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (GBM) at the University of Regensburg for the first time. Young group leaders and experienced postdocs were able to strengthen their leadership skills and build a network of peers with the help of Angloher Consulting, experienced professors, and numerous sponsors.
It was a great pleasure to have been invited to this year’s Photopharmacology Conference in Sète. As a family, we thoroughly enjoyed the talks and the exchange with renowned experts and dearest colleagues in this field.
Enzymes are not evolved for photocontrol. What an obvious statement that we could now further illustrate in our collaborative study with the group of Prof. Sílvia Osuna (University of Girona, Spain). We particularly show that the light-induced activation can be improved through targeted adaptation of the enzyme environment to 100 or potentially even further.
A highlight of 2025 is the article by Caroline Hiefinger on the synthesis, characterisation and incorporation of six photoswitchable unnatural amino acids specifically for the photocontrol of enzymes.
Interested in cell imaging with spatiotemporal control? Then check out our article by Sabrina Mandl, Barbara Maiwald and Elena Adlmanninger in close collaboration with the group of Johannes Broichhagen (FMP Berlin)!
In our second manuscript of this year, we report an alternative mechanism of enzymatic photocontrol by the photoswitch azobenzene, again published in ACS Catalysis. Fjoralba Zeqiri, Caroline Hiefinger, Sabrina Mandl and Enrico Hupfeld were involved from our group.
6th June 2025
Andrea Hupfeld finished her habilitation giving her the title Dr. habil. On this occassion we started our new enlightenment tradition, which honors graduates of a doctorate or higher.
9th May 2025
Mona Wieland and Andrea Hupfeld had the pleasure to share our progress on engenieering of photoxenases in Milan at NextGenBiocat 2025 with a poster and an invited talk.
Our first manuscript this year on the reversible photocontrol of a chemotherapeutic enzyme has been accepted for publication by ACS Catalysis. Great work by our students Mona Wieland, Barbara Germscheid and Johanna Rein!
2nd May 2025
A warm welcome to our new Master student Verena Pape, who already substantially assisted our work during her studies.
21st January 2025
Andrea Hupfeld, Sabrina Mandl and Caroline Hiefinger participated in the exciting and interactive conference Advances in Chemical Biology 2025, organized by DECHEMA. Congratulations to Caroline Hiefinger for winning a poster prize!
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