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Timo Niedermeyer @niedermeyer-lab.bsky.social · Aug 25

Still time to register for the upcoming VAAM symposium in Berlin, but the deadline is approaching - visit the symposium website at bcp.fu-berlin.de/pharmazie/fa... and follow the link to the registration portal! 🦠

VAAM-Symposium

bcp.fu-berlin.de

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Reposted by Timo Niedermeyer

Timo Niedermeyer @niedermeyer-lab.bsky.social · May 22

Interested in natural product producing microorganisms? 🦠 See you in Berlin... 😀

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Timo Niedermeyer @niedermeyer-lab.bsky.social · May 22

Interested in natural product producing microorganisms? 🦠 See you in Berlin... 😀

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Timo Niedermeyer @niedermeyer-lab.bsky.social · Feb 19

Tut gut, das zu lesen, dafür setzen sich die Professor:innen der Pharmazie schon länger ein. Der Entwurf liegt auf dem Tisch, alle Betroffenen haben diskutiert - jetzt ist "die Politik" am Zug...

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Timo Niedermeyer @niedermeyer-lab.bsky.social · Feb 19

Interessanter Fund: Es gibt genau eine Partei, die die Aktualisierung der AAppO so wichtig fand, dass sie dieses Thema in ihr Wahlprogramm aufgenommen hat - @gruene.de: "Wir setzen uns für eine Novellierung der Approbationsordnungen des Pharmazie- und Medizinstudiums ein." 👍

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Reposted by Timo Niedermeyer

Winkler Laboratory @winklerlab.bsky.social · Feb 7

📢 It is 5 min before 12❗

"Aufstehen für Demokratie" is committed to fact-based political decisions & democratic processes:
www.aufstehenfuerdemokratie.de
www.openpetition.de/!ychtb

📅 Join us on Feb 12th at 11:55 am at universities and research institutions in Germany.

🔬 Science needs democracy 🤝

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Reposted by Timo Niedermeyer

Danielle Beckman @daniellebeckman.bsky.social · Jan 30

Now replace 'driving' with 'piloting', or any other task requiring high level of attention. A virus that can go inside your neocortex, what could possibly go wrong? #NeuroCovid

Driving Under the Cognitive Influence of COVID-19: Exploring the Impact of Acute SARS-CoV-2 Infection on Road Safety

Results: Findings indicate an association between acute COVID-19 rates and increased car crashes with an OR of 1.5 (1.23-1.26 95%CI). The analysis did not find a protective effect of vaccination against increased crash risks, contrary to previous assumptions. The OR of car crashes associated with COVID-19 was comparable to driving under the influence of alcohol at legal limits or driving with a seizure disorder.

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Timo Niedermeyer @niedermeyer-lab.bsky.social · Jan 2

Paul Ehrlich in his office. If Paul Ehrlich had had an internet browser, he would have had too many tabs open. 🙃

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Timo Niedermeyer @niedermeyer-lab.bsky.social · Nov 26

Stay tuned for more details about this at the #ICTC13! 😁

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Timo Niedermeyer @niedermeyer-lab.bsky.social · Nov 20

Would be cool if you could add me as well. Thanks

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Timo Niedermeyer @niedermeyer-lab.bsky.social · Mar 5

Well-invested startup funds – #HEPA air purifiers for all lecture halls & seminar rooms of our institute. As research has shown, air purifiers can be one puzzle piece in preventing the spread of airborne diseases, and increase the performance of students. #BildungAberSicher #IndoorAirQuality

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Timo Niedermeyer @niedermeyer-lab.bsky.social · Mar 2

Some books were easier to throw away, though… #globukalypse

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Timo Niedermeyer @niedermeyer-lab.bsky.social · Mar 2

Mucking out the library I have inherited from my predecessor – feels weird to throw away books, but how useful are books about molecular biology from the 1990’s or the immune system from the 1980’s? :-)

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Timo Niedermeyer @niedermeyer-lab.bsky.social · Oct 25

Congratulations, Markus! PhD student #7 leaving the group – first of the “second gen PhD students” who started their work
at the University of Halle. Well done, thanks for following up on the chemistry of the cyanobacterium A. hydrillicola and the discovery of the aetokthonostatins! #proudPI

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Timo Niedermeyer @niedermeyer-lab.bsky.social · Oct 3

If you are interested in more details about aetokthonostatin, please read the paper and the extensive supporting materials (sorry, not immediately OA, I try to do better in the future… :) ). And while A. hydrillicola is nasty, it is still beautiful, isn’t it? ;-) 11/11

Timo Niedermeyer @niedermeyer-lab.bsky.social · Oct 3

This bacterium is now known to produce two very different but very potent toxins, making it a potential threat also for human health. Monitoring of the cyanobacterium and its toxins is strongly recommended. 10/

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Timo Niedermeyer @niedermeyer-lab.bsky.social · Oct 3

This project was much more straight-forward than our last project with A. hydrillicola, but the findings may be rather troubling: In contrast to all other known dolastatin-producers, which are marine cyanobacteria, A. hydrillicola thrives in freshwater – also in drinking water reservoirs. 9/

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Timo Niedermeyer @niedermeyer-lab.bsky.social · Oct 3

A. hydrillicola is the first cultured cyanobacterium producing dolastatin derivatives, which allowed uncovering biosynthetic gene clusters of this compound family in collaboration with Jan Mareš from the Biology Centre of the #CzechAcademyOfSciences. 8/

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Timo Niedermeyer @niedermeyer-lab.bsky.social · Oct 3

We confirmed that AEST impacts microtubule dynamics similarly to dolastatin 10 and showed that it inhibits reproduction of the nematode C. elegans. Interestingly, although dolastatins derivatives are used in the clinic, nothing has been known about their biosynthesis. 7/

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Timo Niedermeyer @niedermeyer-lab.bsky.social · Oct 3

Aetokthono- is obvious, but why -statins? They are chemically closely related to the dolastatins. Dolastatins are among the best-known cyanobacterial #NaturalProducts, derivatives of them are exploited as warheads in antibody-drug conjugates used to treat cancer. 6/

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Timo Niedermeyer @niedermeyer-lab.bsky.social · Oct 3

Thus, there had to be another compound in the extract with higher cytotoxicity than AETX – which sparked our interest… :-) In the resulting publication, we present the isolation, structure elucidation, bioactivity, and biosynthesis of the aetokthonostatins (#AEST). 5/

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Timo Niedermeyer @niedermeyer-lab.bsky.social · Oct 3

However, after we had finally isolated AETX, we found to our surprise that a crude A. hydrillicola extract was much more cytotoxic than a corresponding amount of pure AETX. Also, extracts that did not contain any AETX were still cytotoxic. 4/

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Timo Niedermeyer @niedermeyer-lab.bsky.social · Oct 3

10 years ago, searching for the toxin causing vacuolar myelinopathy, we observed that extracts of the cyanobacterium A. hydrillicola were strongly cytotoxic. This motivated us to search for the VM toxin in the cyanobacterium, as we suspected it to be responsible for the observed cytotoxicity. 3/

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Timo Niedermeyer @niedermeyer-lab.bsky.social · Oct 3

Remember aetokthonotoxin (AETX), the “eagle-killer #cyanotoxin” that we discovered to kill e.g. bald eagles (www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... )? A. hydrillicola not only produces #AETX. 2/

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Timo Niedermeyer @niedermeyer-lab.bsky.social · Oct 3

The cyanobacterium Aetokthonos hydrillicola really is nasty, as we show in the most recent @PNASNews cover story (www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... ). A thread… 1/

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