Tobias Erb
Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology, Marburg, Germany
Tobi Erb is synthetic biologist and Director at the Max Planck Institute for terrestrial Microbiology in Marburg (D). Tobi studied Chemistry and Biology and did his PhD at the University of Freiburg and the Ohio State University. After a postdoctoral stay at the University of Illinois, Erb headed a junior research group at ETH Zürich, before relocating to the Max Planck Society. At MPI Marburg, Tobi works with an international, interdisciplinary team of 30+ people from 20+ nations, supported by fully-staffed in-house facilities (e.g., lab-automation, metabolomics, FACS) and collaborating with different labs worldwide.
”The Erb lab interfaces biology, chemistry with material sciences, and centers on the function and design of new-to-nature enzymes and metabolic networks, in particular those that capture CO2 (Science 2016).
We combine lab automation and active learning to engineer and optimize these metabolic systems (Nature Communications 2022; Nature Catalysis 2024), and couple them to energy modules (Joule 2024; PNAS 2026), as well as information processing (Science 2024) to achieve higher biological functionalities.
We further compartmentalize these systems to droplets and vesicles (Science 2020) and develop methods to functionalize vesicle membranes (Science Advances, in press) to ultimately create autonomously operating synthetic organelles and cell mimics”
For more information, visit Tobias Erb’s grouppage.
| Main area(s) | Sub-area(s) |
|---|---|
| Metabolism and energy for synthetic cells | Protein-based minimal metabolism for synthetic cells Synthetic membrane potentials Complex interlinked catalytic networks Autonomous carbon converting networks Artificial organelles |
| Enabling technologies for synthetic cells | Protein Design for synthetic cells Cell-free protein expression Droplet-based microfluidics Phospholipid-based synthetic cells |