Axel joined the group as a Ph.D. student. He will work on various projects around enhancing carbon fixation, enzyme engineeing, and synthetic biology in cyanobacteria, as part of our microbial consortia "Feed Forest and Fuel" project, funded by SSF. The project is in collaboration with Per-Olof Syrén (KTH), Håkan Jönsson (KTH), and Verena Siewers (Chalmers).
This year the group had our summer retreat in Enköping! While our intial plans for a return to Solvik or the archipelego fell through, we are really grateful to the chairman of the party planning committee Emil for hosting us. We had BBQ and drinks and a long, sunny night.
We had a group outing to the Jump Yard. There, all greivances were settled on the jousting beam and in the dodge ball cage. Jan tried many backflips into the pit.
We welcome Ute Hoffman as a new post-doc! Ute did her Ph.D. in Freiburg with Annegret Wilde.
We also welcome Axel Knave and Amina Bensabra, two KTH students who will do their masters thesis work with us. Axel will work with Rui and Amina with Elias.
Jan successfully defended his Ph.D. thesis,Systems biology techniques show high prevalence of post-translational regulation in the cyanobacterium Synechocystis PCC 6803. The defense was held over Zoom. Jan and the committee discussed pH control of turbidostats, quantifying proteins, riboswitches, and what it all can mean for scaling up cultures of microalgae. The opponent was Professor Martin Hagemann of University Rostock, and the committee was Christiane Funk of Umeå University, Pauli Kallio of University Turku, and Stephan Klähn of UFZ Leipzig. Congratulations Jan!
Markus successfully defended his Ph.D. thesis, titled, On thermodynamic and kinetic constraints in autotrophic metabolism. The defense was held in person at SciLifeLab. The opponent was Professor Bas Teusink of Vrije University Netherlands, and the committee was Marija Cvijovic of Gothenburg University, Kirstin Gutekunst of University Kassel, and Daniel Machado of NTNU Trondheim. The defense featured discussion about metabolic control theory, different model types, cyanobacteria metabolism, and the definition of cell, "fitness." Thanks to the committee, and congratulations to Markus!
Elias Englund joined our lab in Stockholm as a post-doc, funded by his Formas post-doc grant. Elias did his Ph.D. in Uppsala with Peter Lindblad, then moved to UC Berkeley to do post-doc under Jay Keasling.
Anna Karlsson has joined the group as our newest Ph.D. student. Anna is from Stockholm and did her undergradate degree in Biotechnology at KTH. Anna is co-advised by Fredrik Edfors, Rui Miao, and Åsa Strand (Umeå). She will work on various projects centered around post-translational regulation of the Calvin cycle in plant.
We celebrated the start of summer with a barbeque. Social coordinator Linnéa insisted on the date! After hovering over the weather forecast all morning, few of us brought umbrellas. It rained for hours, and hasnt rained since :) Despite all of that, we found shelter and had a great time!
Johannes successfully defended his Ph.D. thesis, titled Adaptations and constraints associated with autotrophy in microbial metabolism. The defense was held over Zoom. The opponent was Professor Costas Maranas of Penn State University, and the committee was Ilka Axmann of HHU Dusseldorf, Veronique Chotteau of KTH, and Aleksej Zelezniak of Chalmers. Congratulations to Johannes! This excellent thesis can be downloaded at the link above.
Emil Sporre has joined the group as our newest Ph.D. student. Emil is from Stockholm and did his undergradate degree in Biotechnology at KTH. Emil is co-advised by Fredrik Edfors. He will work on various projects centered around post-translational regulation of the Calvin cycle in CO2-fixing bacteria.
We have three new students joining the group for 5-month projects as part of their masters thesis!
Tobi Willi will stay on in our group after completeing his masters thesis. He will work to develop new synthetic biology tools for controlling gene expression in cyanobacteria, with focus on dynamic gene circuits.
We are happy to welcome Rui Miao and Arvid Gynnå as new postdocs in the group.
Rui did her Ph.D. work in Peter Lindblads group in Uppsala and just finished a post-doc stint in Gilles Peltier group at CEA Cadarache, France. She has expertise in synthetic biology techniques as well as cyanobacteria physiology and photosynthesis.
Arvid has his Ph.D. from the lab of Johan Elf in Uppsala. He has expertise in microscopy, gene regulation in bacteria, and mechanisms of homologous recombination. Arvid will work on systems biology of lithoautotrophic bacteria.
Julia Foyer joined us for a 2-month research project. Julia is part of the SciLifeLab masters program Molecular Techniques in Life Science. She will work with Michael and Nick on genetic libraries of autotrophic bacteria. Come on up Julia!
We went out to the cabin "Solvik," in the Swedish archipelago for our yearly group retreat. We made a fire and played board games and (some) used the sauna. Karen's homemade quiz game was fantastic. Kiyan and Paul ate surströmming for the first time. Nick was already acquainted.
Kiyan opening surströmming far from everyone else.
Sara Baldanta joined the group for a three-month research visit. Sara is a Ph.D. student at the Complutense University in Madrid, where she works on cyanobacteria. In our group, Sara will work with Ivana and pursue a new growth-arrest method for cyanobacteria.
We welcome three new KTH Masters students in the group (Feb-June 2020).
We welcome Nick Crang as a new postdoc. Nick has a doctorate from Oxford University, where he worked on the metabolism of nitrogen-fixing bacteria. He has experience in experimental molecular biology, including transposon mutagenesis and flux balance analysis.
We had a homemade dumpling party to celebrate Lun Yao, who will leave and move on to new adventures. Lun has been a pillar in our group and brought CRISPRi to the cyanobacteria world. As is tradition, he prepared most of the food himself, but did offer to teach us too.
With our new website, we shed some of the old news updates. These photos should be preserved for posterity.
*Group photo from 2023 at Åkersberga
Group photo from 2019 at Solvik (with fellow Gamma 5 groups of Kristina Jonas and Per-Olof Syren)
Group photo from December 2018 at Science for Life Laboratory. Left to right: Johann Baurfeind, Michael Jahn, Lun Yao, Paul Hudson, Olivia Hallman, Ivana Cengic, Markus Janasch, Kiyan Shabestary, Johannes Asplund-Samuelsson, Jan Karlsen.
Group photo from May 2016 (with some from Jens Nielsen group)
Group photo from November 2015
A group photo from November 2014
Group photo from April 2013