09.02.2026 GRK 2937 Summer Symposium 2026: Nucleotide Metabolism

This year's three-day coference will take place from 8 to 10 July in the lecture hall and foyer of the SYNMIKRO building.

We are looking forward to three days packed with science!

Wednesday, 8 July - Cell Biology

13:00   Welcome note

13:05   Anjana Badrinarayana (Bangalore, India)
             Order in the chaos: how cells navigate broken genomes

13:45   Rogelio Hernandez (Marburg, AG Thanbichler) 
             Single-Molecule DinG: Where DNA repair meets nucleotide metabolism

14:05   Heath Murray (Newcastle, UK)
             Minimization of the B. subtilis replication origin reveals distinct modules for initiator delivery, DNA unwinding, and helicase activation

14:45   Coffee break

15:15   Paushali Chaudhury (MiNu) 
             Spatial dynamics of mRNA in Bacillus subtilis at single molecule resolution

15:35   Frederico Gueiros-Filho (São Paulo, Brazil)
             Membrane-dependent regulation of PlsX controls phospholipid synthesis in B. subtilis

16:15   Jan Brüwer (Marburg, AG Höfer)
             Zombie cells: Phage-driven RNA nucleotide recycling to boost phage production

16:35   Coffee break

17:00   Lin Lin (Odense, Denmark)
             Flux of fate: molecular and environmental drivers of microbial interactions involving Acinetobacter species

17:40   Nidhi Kalidas (MiNu) 
             Interplay between chromosome segregation and cell division in Caulobacter crescentus

18:00   Poster session 1 including dinner buffet

21:00   End of day 1

 

Thursday, 9 July - Metabolism

09:00   Wulf Blankenfeldt (Brunswick, Germany)
             90 years of Stickland fermentation: C. difficile’s proline-grinding molecular machine

09:40   Sophia Paul (MiNu)
             Architecture of the eight-megadalton Hdr-Vhu-Fwd super-assembly in class I hydrogenotrophic methanogens

10:00   Inês Cardoso Pereira (Lisbon, Portugal)
             Energy conserving membrane complexes in dissimilatory sulfate/sulfite reduction

10:40   Coffee break

11:00   Janka Joline Schmidt (Bethesda, USA)
             tba 

11:35   Catherine Drennan (Cambridge, USA)
             The hard work of making deoxyribonucleotides

12:10   Lunch break

13:15   Aditya Kunjapur (Delaware, USA)
             Genome engineering to bring new chemistry to life

13:55   Patrik Brück (MiNu)
             Evidence for flux-dependent coordinated changes in metabolic enzyme mobilities in bacteria

14:15   Katrin Rittinger (London, UK)
             Bacterial E3 ubiquitin ligases: activation, mechanism and inhibition

14:55   Poster Session 2 including coffee break

17:00   Elyès Gaaloul  (MiNu)
             Targeted delivery of monobodies to human cells with a bacterial nanosyringe

17:20   Renuka Dharani Shivakumar  (MiNu)
             Molecular Insights into a Promiscuous Ap4N Hydrolase

17:40   Fabiana Burchert  (MiNu)
             Regulation of ApxN Synthesis by Aminoacyl-tRNA Synthetases

18:00   End of day 2

 

Friday, 10 July - Synthetic Biology

09:00   Holger Sondermann (Hamburg, Germany)
             Dinucleases at the crossroads of bacterial signaling in RNA degradation

09:40   Mathias Girbig (Marburg, AG Hochberg)
             Coordination of sequential RNase activities in an ancient molecular machine

10:05   Inga Hänelt (Frankfurt, Germany)
             Regulation of bacterial potassium homeostasis by nucleotides

10:45   Coffee break

11:10   Liyun Wang (Marburg, MPI)
             Toolbox of FRET-based c-di-GMP biosensors and its FRET-To-Sort application for genome-wide mapping of c-di-GMP regulation

11:35   Michael Roon (Marburg, AG Randau)
             Type IV CRISPRi effectors: from plasmid conflict to programmable transcriptional control 

12:00   Discussions over lunch snack

14:00   End of symposium

Watch out for updated information, and click here to include the event in your calendar.

Call for Posters, Call for Talks

All scientists were welcome to submit abstracts for talks, and PhD students have the opportunity to present a poster during the symposium. Submission of abstracts for posters or talks is now closed.

Ticket orders

Registration is open until 29 June 2026. Tickets for the three-day event are available here.