ERC Synergy Grants for the LMU

• Three LMU researchers and their international teams have won prestigious Synergy Grants from the European Research Council.
• One of them went to chronobiologist Prof. Martha Merrow from the Faculty of Medicine

The ERC-funded project at the Faculty of Medicine

Chronobiology: The internal clock of bacteria

Chronobiologist Prof. emerita Martha Merrow was Director of the Institute of Medical Psychology at LMU until 2023, where she currently heads the "Molecular Chronobiology" research group. In the MicroClock (The Bacillus subtilis circadian clock: from molecules to mutualism) project, funded with 8.3 million euros over six years, Merrow, as spokesperson for the project, will work with partners in England (Prof. Antony Dodd, John Innes Centre, Norwich) and the Netherlands (Prof. Ákos T. Kovács, Leiden University) to investigate how this circadian clock works in Bacillus subtilis and how it influences the internal clocks in plants and yeast. The trinational joint project is the first Synergy Grant for the LMU Faculty of Medicine. The internal clock in B. subtilis is mainly active when the bacteria form a multicellular complex, a so-called biofilm. This is relevant for both ecological and pathological situations. "Our results will therefore be of great importance beyond basic biology and could, for example, be of great relevance for the timing of antibiotic administration in patients or for the optimization of clinical conditions mediated by the microbiome," says Merrow.