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Dr. Maria Hoernke

 

Group Leader
 

alternative afiliation:

Department of Physical Chemistry

Von-Danckelmann-Platz 4

D-06120 Halle (S)

phone: +49 345 5525 807

Department of Pharmaceutical Technology and Biopharmacy
Hermann-Herder-Strasse 9
D-79104 Freiburg i. Br.

Phone: +49 761 203 6343
Fax: +49 761 203 6366

eMail: Maria Hoernke

Room no.: 03 005 A

MHoe_Port_small.jpg

 

 

We are a young, interdisciplinary team in biophysical chemistry and connected to the department of pharmaceutics at Freiburg University and department of physical chemistry at Halle University. We collaborate with groups in Freiburg, Prague, Halle, Leipzig, Jena, Erlangen, Bayreuth, Vienna, Shanghai.

We work with lipid membranes and membrane-active peptides, polymers, or proteins. Using microcalorimetry, time-correlated fluorescence spectroscopy, monolayers, and other biophysical methods, we investigate the selectivity of antimicrobial polymers or pH-reponsive polymers designed for enhanced endosomal escape for different lipid membranes.
We measure and model membrane permeabilization, characterize the interactions of biomimetic compounds, and reach out to microbiology.
 

Themen für Abschlussarbeiten

Wir bieten Themen für Abschlussarbeiten an. Motivierte KandidatInnen melden sich gerne bei Maria Hoernke. 

NEWS

 

   
   
02-2024 Maria is invited to the german meeting of the Controlled Release Society and also presents at the Freiburg Macro Colloquium.
01-2924

Habilitation presentation: the last step to venia legendi.

11-2023 Annika wins one of the Poster Flash Talk Awards and Maria presents at the czech Biophysics and Electrochemistry meeting in Prague.
 11-2023 Katharina presents at the FAF meeting in Freiburg.
10-2023 Annika and Maria travel to Prague for GUV miscroscopy. Let's hope for conclusive data.
10-2023 Welcome to Bjarne for his Diploma project about archaeal lipids.
08-2023 Welcome to Annika for her MSc project about pH-sensitive polymers.
08-2023 Katharina and Maria present posters at the EBSA meeting in Stockholm
06-2023 The group has now two afiliations: Freiburg and Halle Univeristy. The Halle team is associated to the RTG 2670 BEAM Beyond Amphiphilicity.
 2023 The DFG funds our project about pH-sensitive membrane permeabilization
03-2023 Our paper about the bias of PG/PE model membranes towards leaky fusoon is out: https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2023/sm/d2sm01691e
03-2023 Maria presents at the GEM meeting.
09-2022 A talk and posters at the german biophysics meeting.
09-2022 Shuai defends her PhD thesis! 3 papers. Great success. Congratulations Dr. Shi!
09-2022 Our paper on Leaky membrane fusion is out. Including a Leakage Protocol. https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlehtml/2022/NA/D2NA00464J
  Maria contributes to a review about calcein-based assays for endosomal escape https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/mabi.202200167
05-2022 Katharina and Maria talk at the Biomembrane Meeting in Drübeck
05-2022 Shuai and Maria talk at the AC21 Meeting in Strasbourg
02-2022 Our paper on a fusogenic antimicrobial polymer is out. https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.langmuir.1c03445
  Our paper about antimicrobial polycations is out. More than Leakage. https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2021/cp/d0cp05651k
04-2021

Stefanie defends her Diploma project very succesfully. Congratulations. A manuscript is planned.

04-2021

Our 3 posters are discussed lively at the European Membrane Meeting EJTEMM.

01-2021

Janina joins us for a project. Welcome!

10-2020

Anja joins us for a project. Welcome!

09-2020

Stefanie joins us for her Diploma project. Welcome!

06-2020

Kartharina joined us for her PhD project. Welcome!

03-2020

The German Membrane Biophysics Meeting was a success! Thank you everyone who contributed.

12-2019

Anja defends her PhD Thesis very succesfully. Congratulations Dr. Stulz!

11-2019

Our paper on lipid selectivity appears in Lagnmuir. pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.langmuir.9b01849

10-2019

Ndjali finishes his Master: Models for Vesicle Leakage and Binding Experiments on Lipid Vesicles

1-2019

Ndjali joins us for a project. Welcome!

11-2018

DFG funds our project about Selectivity in Membrane Permeabilization for 3 years.

9-2018

We are happy to welcome Shuai for her PhD project and Annika for her practical term!

5-2018

Anja wins another Poster Award. Well done!

3-2018

Anja wins a Poster Award. Congratulations!

1-2018

Our paper about Quantified Membrane Permeabilization is out.
ACS Nano

3-2017

The Daimler & Benz Foundation supports our research on lipid clustering for two years.

 

Current research

 
We are interested in membrane biophysical chemistry in relation to membrane-active compounds for diverse therapeutical applications or for biochemical knowlegde.

 

CV 


Dr. Maria Hoernke studied chemistry at the Martin-Luther-Universität in Halle (Germany) and at Universidad de Burgos (Spain). She specialized in physical chemistry and biophysics.

Her Diploma thesis focused on the interactions of peptides with lipid model membranes and was carried out in 2007/2008 in Halle(S.). For her PhD project, Maria moved to the interfaces department of Max-Planck-Institute of Colloids and Interfaces in Potsdam (Germany) to study the impact of interfaces on amyloid formation of peptides. After receiving her PhD in 2012, she joined the Theory & Bio-Systems department of the same MPI to complement the project with molecular dynamics simulations as a Postdoc. In 2013, Maria joined Göteborgs Universitet (Sweden). She won a Marie Curie IEF fellowship in order to use time resolved X-ray solution scattering to study conformational changes in photoreceptor proteins. She also investigated structural changes in membrane associated proteins by infrared spectroscopy. 2015 Maria moved to Freiburg to help establishing the Heerklotz group. The Daimler and Benz foundation contributed funding and since 2019 Maria raises funding for her own team from the DFG. In 2023, the team got split to Freiburg and Halle University.

Maria was speaker of the section 'Membrane Biophysics' of Deutsche Gesellschaft für Biophysik e.V.
http://www.dgfb.org/de/ueber-dgfb/sektion-2.html


Publications


List of publications
 

Research topics 

  • biophysics of lipid membrane models
  • peptide-membrane interactions
  • permeabilization of lipid membranes
  • antimicrobial activity
  • lipid selectivity
  • conformational changes and orientation of mebrane-bound, surface-bound and soluble proteins or peptides
  • surface-sensitive biophysical methods

 

Methods

  • fluorescence spectroscopy (TCSPC, FRET, etc.)
  • infrared spectroscopy (including infrared reflection-absorption spectroscopy)
  • microcalorimetry (differential scanning calorimetry, isothermal titration calorimetry)
  • monolayer methods
  • X-ray solution scattering (SAXS/WAXS, time-resolved X-ray scattering)
  • UV/VIS spectroscopy
  • circular dichroism
  • dynamic light scattering


Monolayer techniques

  • infrared reflection absorption spectroscopy (IRRAS)
  • grazing incidence X-ray diffraction reflectometry (X-ray and neutrons)
  • total reflection X-ray fluorescence


Computational methods

  • basic knowledge in MD simulations

 

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