Microorganisms are at the core of the global carbon cycle, releasing and consuming billions of tons of the greenhouse gases carbon dioxide (CO₂) and methane (CH₄). They are responsible for more than 50% of the annual transformations of these important greenhouse gases, playing a key role in carbon cycling.
The Cluster’s mission is to gain a fundamental, molecular-mechanistic understanding of CO₂- and CH₄-converting microorganisms in the context of climate change. This understanding will be generated through an interdisciplinary, integrative, scale-bridging approach, ranging from the atomic structure of enzymes to the systems level of cells.
By combining molecular evolutionary and biochemical approaches, the Cluster develops a comprehensive understanding of how microbes evolved the ability to capture CO₂, shaping the development of the biological carbon cycle. It studies how microbes adjust and evolve in response to the challenges of the Anthropocene. To overcome the limitations of naturally evolved CO₂- and CH₄-converting processes, the Cluster leverages synthetic biology to break new ground, developing and testing “new-to-nature” solutions that open novel, more efficient biological pathways for CO₂/CH₄ conversions that nature has not yet explored.
M4C is supported by Marburg University and the Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology, involving researchers from Justus Liebig University Giessen and the University of Münster.
(Planned) Support Activities for Postdocs
As the Cluster is newly established, information on planned postdoc support activities will be provided at a later stage.
Recruiting
Open positions are listed on the cluster’s job page.
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