Research Theatre and Science Slam (in English)

Excerpt of the Program from the Max Planck Society for the Max Planck Day on Friday, 23 June 2023 in Göttingen

7:00 PM: Research Theatre and Science Slam in the Old Town Hall (in English)

Markt 9, 37073 Göttingen

The Max Planck Day ends with an exciting evening program in the Old Town Hall:

How is an antibiotic created? A research theatre from the world of microbes.

Without what bacteria produce, our lives would look very different. Antibiotics like penicillin, cancer drugs, medicines needed for organ transplants - many of these drugs are produced by bacteria and often only minimally modified by chemists in the laboratory.

An important class of these microbial natural products are peptides, i.e. small proteins produced by non-ribosomal peptide synthetases (NRPS). As long as the name of these mega-enzyme complexes is, as great is their function. We at the Department of Natural Products in Organismal Interactions at the Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology in Marburg have been on the trail of these mini-factories for a while. In order to make the complexity of these enzymes clear to you as well, we would like to demonstrate their function in a "playful" way. Nothing is left to chance and you will see that complex natural substances can only be built up and even reassembled if all parts of the enzymes or all members of a working group work together.

Afterwards, six young scientists from the Max Planck Society will present their respective research in the Science Slam:

Sergio San Miguel, Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology, Berlin

Alina Studenova, Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig

Monica Gobran, Max Planck Institute for Multidisciplinary Sciences, Göttingen

Varatharaja Nallathambi, Max-Planck-Institut für Eisenforschung GmbH, Düsseldorf

Valentin Thoss, Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, Garching

Ricardo Fernandes, Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology, Jena

Free entry! Registration required: https://gv-events.mpg.de/e/slam

Livestream on www.youtube.com/@MaxPlanckScience