Jolanda van Munster

I am a microbiologist with a passion for carbohydrates and their role in biology; I am particularly interested in finding out how microbes degrade complex carbohydrates. I became fascinated by carbohydrate active enzymes while pursuing my PhD in microbial physiology at the University of Groningen. There I combined biochemistry with fungal genetics to study how enzymes degraded complex sugars in fungal cell walls. As postdoctoral fellow at the University of Nottingham I investigated how fungi regulate their gene expression and produce enzymes to degrade complex carbohydrates in plant cell wall lignocellulose. Funded by a BBSRC Fellowship, I then moved to the University of Manchester where I investigating how fungi, via their enzymes, affect the properties of plant material. I applied surface analysis tools to characterise changes in insoluble lignocellulose and combined this with detailed characterisation of the responsible enzyme activities. This work aimed to understand of how the fungal enzymatic machinery deconstructs plant biomass, a prerequisite for improving exploitation in sustainable biotechnology. At SRUC my research focusses on plant biomass degradation by anaerobic fungi that are part of the ruminant microbiome.