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Jan-Hendrik Hehem­ann re­ceives the ERC Con­sol­id­ator Grant

Mar 23, 2022
Ba­sic Re­search in the Field of Mar­ine Car­bon Stor­age

Jan-Hendrik Hehemann has been awarded the ERC Consolidator Grant, one of the European Research Council's most highly endowed awards. He will each receive around 2 million euros for his basic research on marine carbon cycling in the coming years.

Jan-Hendrik Hehemann
Marine scientist Jan-Hendrik Hehemann will receive around 2 million Euros in funding from the European Research Council for their basic research. (Photo: Jens Lehmkühler)

Pro­fessor Jan-Hendrik Hehem­ann and his team at the Max Planck In­sti­tute for Mar­ine Mi­cro­bi­o­logy in Bre­men (MPIMM), the MARUM – Cen­ter for Mar­ine En­vir­on­mental Sci­ences and the Fac­ulty of Bio­logy/​Chem­istry at the Uni­versity of Bre­men, are pleased that their jointly de­veloped ideas in the field of mar­ine car­bon stor­age will be fun­ded by the European Re­search Coun­cil for the next five years.

New ways out of the climate crisis

The cli­mate crisis has cre­ated a de­mand for new ways to re­duce the con­cen­tra­tion of car­bon di­ox­ide in the at­mo­sphere. The ERC pro­ject "Dis­cover mo­lecu­lar path­ways for glyco-car­bon se­quest­ra­tion" (C-Quest) in­vest­ig­ates the mo­lecu­lar mech­an­ism of car­bon (di­ox­ide) stor­age by al­gae in the ocean. C-Quest pos­tu­lates that par­tic­u­lar poly­sac­char­ides from al­gae form a car­bon sink in the ocean. "Al­gae syn­thes­ize ex­tra­cel­lu­lar poly­sac­char­ides from car­bon di­ox­ide and po­s­i­tion them on their sur­face. They form a kind of skin or pro­tect­ive wall. This wall is what the bac­teria have to pen­et­rate when they try to get at the eas­ily di­gest­ible nu­tri­ents, pro­teins, lip­ids, and nuc­leic acids in­side the algal cell," Hehem­ann ex­plains. "So it's es­sen­tial for the al­ga's sur­vival that these poly­sac­char­ides are dif­fi­cult for the bac­teria to di­gest. Oth­er­wise, the bac­teria could break through the pro­tect­ive wall with the help of en­zymes and sub­sequently di­gest the alga from the in­side un­til it dies."

Algal sugars as a carbon sink

These pro­tect­ive poly­sac­char­ides are formed in the ocean by al­gae through pho­to­syn­thesis from the green­house gas car­bon di­ox­ide. As al­gae form these poly­sac­char­ides faster than bac­teria can break them down with en­zymes – which would re­lease car­bon di­ox­ide again – the poly­sac­char­ides form a global sink for the green­house gas car­bon di­ox­ide. Thus, they help store un­known amounts of car­bon di­ox­ide in the ocean and reg­u­late the cli­mate to an un­known ex­tent.

These hy­po­theses are now be­ing in­vest­ig­ated in the C-Quest pro­ject. Jan-Hendrik Hehemann and his Emmy Noether Research Group, which is fun­ded by the Ger­man Re­search Found­a­tion (DFG), de­veloped the hy­po­theses and in­vest­ig­a­tion meth­ods in re­cent years in hos bridging group Mar­ine Gly­cobi­o­logy at the Max Planck In­sti­tute for Mar­ine Mi­cro­bi­o­logy and the MARUM at the Uni­versity of Bre­men. They are novel bioana­lyt­ical and biocata­lyt­ical meth­ods. For the first time, they al­low for poly­sac­char­ides to be meas­ured with suf­fi­cient mo­lecu­lar res­ol­u­tion in the ocean. In this way, their con­tri­bu­tion to car­bon stor­age can be re­cor­ded and their de­grad­ab­il­ity by bac­teria can be de­term­ined in the labor­at­ory.

The ERC Grant: a Coveted Award

The ERC Con­sol­id­ator Grant is one of the European Uni­on's most highly en­dowed fund­ing meas­ures for in­di­vidual re­search­ers. With this grant, the European Re­search Coun­cil sup­ports ex­cel­lent re­search­ers in their in­nov­at­ive ba­sic re­search.

Algae under the microscope
Coscinodiscus wailesii is a microalgae belonging to the diatoms, which form algal blooms and produce substantial amounts of polysaccharides in energy stores, cell walls and as exudates. The research group Marine Glycobiology studies the turnover and role of these glycans in the carbon cycle. (© Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology/ C. Robb)

Professor Jan-Hendrik Hehemann: Bremen via France, Canada, and the USA

Pro­fessor Hehem­ann stud­ied bio­chem­istry in Ham­burg and com­pleted his PhD in France at the Ro­scoff Mar­ine Sta­tion and Pierre & Marie Curie Uni­versity Paris (now Sor­bonne) as a Marie Curie Fel­low (2010). He then held two fel­low­ship-fun­ded postdoc­toral po­s­i­tions at the Uni­versity of Vic­toria (Canada) and at the Mas­sachu­setts In­sti­tute of Tech­no­logy (MIT) in the USA. From 2015, he con­duc­ted five years of re­search in an Emmy No­ether pro­ject as a group leader net­work­ing at the MPIMM and MARUM at the Uni­versity of Bre­men. Since 2021, he has been a Heis­en­berg Pro­fessor head­ing the Bridge Group Mar­ine Gly­cobi­o­logy at Fac­ulty 02, MARUM, and the MPIMM.

Noch Fra­gen?

Group leader

MARUM MPG Bridge Group Marine Glycobiology

Dr. Jan-Hendrik Hehemann

MPI für Marine Mikrobiologie
Celsiusstr. 1
D-28359 Bremen

Room: 

2126

Phone: 

+49 421 2028-7360

Dr. Jan-Hendrik Hehemann

Head of Press & Communications

Dr. Fanni Aspetsberger

MPI für Marine Mikrobiologie
Celsiusstr. 1
D-28359 Bremen

Room: 

1345

Phone: 

+49 421 2028-9470

Dr. Fanni Aspetsberger
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