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AG Anke Becker

Microorganisms have colonized virtually every biotic and abiotic habitat on earth, and interact with virtually all complex eukaryotic life forms. Key to this success of microorganisms is their enormous capacity of biochemical, physiological and cellular adaptation through genetic change in evolution and phenotypic plasticity.

Research in the Becker lab aims at understanding organizational principles of bacterial genomes, and the molecular-mechanistic repertoire of microorganisms to sense, interpret, respond and adapt to changes in their abiotic and biotic environment. Building on this knowledge, we tailor bacterial platform organisms (synthetic biology chassis) to enable metabolic or regulatory rewiring and implementation of new biological functions, e.g. for sustainable production of biochemicals using the greenhouse gas CO2 as a carbon source, and for understanding complex bacterial traits such as the root nodule symbiosis which provides directly or indirectly a third of the nitrogen in human nutrition.

Learn more about our research and infrastructure. 

Our research group is a member of the Center for Synthetic Microbiology (SYNMIKRO).

Selected Publications

Wagner M, Döhlemann J, Geisel D, Sobetzko P, Serrania J, Lenz P, Becker A (2024) Engineering a Sinorhizobium meliloti chassis with monopartite, single replicon genome configuration. ACS Synth Biol 13:2515-2532.

Körner D, Schäfer NM, Lagares A jun, Birmes L, Oehlmann NN, Addison H, Poehl S, Thanbichler M, Rebelein J, Petersen J, Becker A. (2024) Modular low-copy-number plasmid vectors for Rhodobacterales with extended host range in Alphaproteobacteria. ACS Synth Biol 13:1537-1548

Stukenberg D, Hoff J, Faber A, Becker A (2022) NT-CRISPR, combining natural transformation and CRISPR-Cas9 counterselection for markerless and scarless genome editing in Vibrio natriegens. Comm Biol 5:265

Bettenworth V, van Vliet S, Turkowyd B, Bamberger A, Wendt H, McIntosh M, Steinchen W, Endesfelder U, Becker A (2022) Frequency modulation of a bacterial quorum sensing response. Nat Commun 13:2772 

Krol E, Stuckenschneider L, Kästle Silva JM, Graumann PL, Becker A. (2021) Stable inheritance of Sinorhizobium meliloti cell growth polarity requires an FtsN-like protein and an amidase. Nat Commun 12:545.

Schäper S, Steinchen W, Krol E, Altegoer F, Skotnicka D, Søgaard-Andersen L, Bange G, Becker A (2017) AraC-like transcriptional activator CuxR binds c‑di‑GMP by a PilZ-like mechanism to regulate extracellular polysaccharide production. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 114: E4822-E4831