News April 6 2022: We are pleased to inform about this great success. Congratulations to Julia for winning the prestigious award of the Royal Dutch Society of Microbiology (KNVM).
The KNVM Van Leeuwenhoek Awards go to young Postdocs in microbiology (for the best publication as first, last and/or corresponding author, one each in the categories “general microbiology”, “medical microbiology”, or “microbial ecology”. Julia has been awarded in the category microbial ecology for her publication “Methanogenic archaea use a bacteria-like methyltransferase system to demethoxylate aromatic compounds” that was published in the ISME journal last year. The paper is about an archaeon that produces methane from methoxylated aromatic compounds that are among others constituents of lignin and thereby very abundant on earth. In the publication the authors unrevealed the underlying metabolic pathway and showed that the methyl transfer is more similar to that from bacteria than to conventional archaeal methyl transfer pathways. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41396-021-01025-6.
