2016
2015
The 7th summer school “Marine Biotechnology” took place at the Research Unit Marine Natural Products Chemistry. Ten students from Switzerland (FHNW and ZHAW) visited the RU Marine Natural Products Chemistry in the first week of July 2015 for five days, in order to get deep insights into marine (microbial) natural product chemistry research. The students attended a whole day expedition on GEOMAR research vessel F.K. Littorina to collect sediment and seawater samples at different sites at the Kiel Fjord, Baltic Sea. They developed hands-on experience on the experimental setting of natural products research “from habitat to product”, including the isolation of marine microorganisms, evaluation of their biodiversity and enrichment from different samples on various media. They also learned extraction, LC-MS dereplication of the secondary metabolites in different culture conditions and in vitro screening of antimicrobial activities against three test organisms. In addition, a microbial interaction study was performed using the same bacterial strain and the test organisms.
Besides several internal lectures about e.g. marine natural products chemistry and biotechnology, the research unit, GEOMAR, and the Baltic Sea in general, two external lectures presented by Dr. Fernando Reyes from Fundación MEDINA, Granada, Spain (see FB3/MN Talks)/typo3/ and Dr. Levent Piker from Coastal Research and Management (CRM), Kiel gave the students additional insights into marine natural product research and approaches within the field of marine biotechnology.
The students also had a chance to visit aquarium, Technology & Logistics Centre of GEOMAR and Germany’s only manned research submersible, JAGO.
Social events like a guided tour through Kiel and a get-together-barbeque at the beach are an integral part of the summer school.
The summer school is supported by Novartis (Switzerland), an industrial partner of FHNW.
