What happens when a cat climbs onto a sunflower? The sunflower is unstable, will quickly bend, and the cat will fall to the ground. However, if the cat only needs a quick boost to catch a bird from there, then the sunflower can act as a "metastable intermediate step". This is essentially th ... more
Dr. Christian Derntl
Technische Universität Wien, Institut für Verfahrenstechnik, Umwelttechnik und Technische Biowissenschaften
Christian Derntl, born in 1983, completed his diploma studies in microbiology and immunology at the University of Vienna. In 2014, he completed his PhD study in technical chemistry with distinction at TU Wien. The topic of his thesis was the regulation of cellulases in the fungus Trichoderma reesei. In the following years, Christian Derntl remained at TU Wien and worked on the development of an artificial gene expression system in industrial fungi. In a side project he focused on the secondary metabolism in fungi, in which he acquired further valuable experience in 2017 and 2018 as a postdoc at Vienna’s University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences in the research group “Metabolomics and Bioactive Substances”. Subsequently, Christian Derntl returned to TU Wien to work as a university assistant, and since 2021 as a senior scientist in the research group “Synthetic Biology and Molecular Biotechnology”.
Leitmotif
Every problem has at least one solution.
Activities
Christian Derntl currently leads projects on “ribosomally synthesized and post-translationally modified peptides” (RiPPs) and the regulatory network for morphology and the secondary metabolism in fungi. The scientific topics cover various bioinformatics and biotechnological approaches to discover novel secondary metabolites. An important aspect is the development and establishment of different methods for efficient strain design. Christian Derntl is also involved in teaching at TU Wien, giving lectures in biology, microbiology, biochemistry and biotechnology.
Focus
Christian Derntl’s scientific focus is the discovery of novel secondary metabolites from fungi.
Methods
- Molecular biology
- Microbiology
- Synthetic biology
- Genome editing (CRISPR/Cas)
- Bioinformatics
- Transcriptomics
- Enzyme characterization