Beate Averhoff

Beate Averhoff studied microbiology in Göttingen and got her PhD with Gerhard Gottschalk on a biotechnological project. After doing a Postdoc with Nicholas Ornston at Yale University  on Acinetobacter baylyi she worked in Braunschweig (Ken Timmis), had an in interims professorschip in Genetics at LMU Munich before she finally moved to Frankfurt. Prof. Averhoff is a leader in the field of biology of Acinetobacter. Currently her lab focusses on understanding the mechanisms of adaptation of A. baumannii to the human host. Her group discovered several novel energy and carbon sources utilized by A. baumannii in the human host, identified the molecular basis of osmotolerance  and established the pathways for lipid metabolism. The second leg of her work is the analyses  of horizontal gene transfer in bacteria. In their  thermophilic model system  Thermus thermophilus they elucidated the subunit composition, structure, dynamics and function of the DNA translocator in Thermus thermophilus, a macromolecular transport machinery that spans the entire cell periphery from the cytoplasmic membrane to the medium. Beate Averhoff is the treasurer of the German Society for General and Applied Microbiology (VAAM) and the delegate of the VAAM to the Federation of European Microbiological Societies (FEMS).  For further information: www.mikrobiologie-frankfurt.de