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ERC Consolidator Grant for Tristan Wagner

ERC Consolidator Grant for Tristan Wagner

Nov 23, 2023

Tristan Wagner from the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology wins an ERC Consolidator Grant.

The European Research Council (ERC), set up by the European Union in 2007, is the premier European funding organisation for excellent frontier research and support. By granting scientific projects spanning all disciplines, from engineering to life sciences to humanities, ERC allows expert scientists to develop their own fields.

The ERC announced the winners of its latest Consolidator Grant competition for ambitious mid-career researchers today. Out of 2,130 candidates, the ERC has selected 308 researchers as year’s laureates. Dr. Tristan Wagner, head of the Max Planck Research Group Microbial Metabolism at the Max Planck Institute in Bremen, is one of them. “The new Consolidator Grant winners represent some of the best of European research”, said Prof. Maria Leptin, President of the European Research Council. The funding is part of the EU’s Horizon Europe program, investing a total of 657 million euros this year to tackle big scientific questions.

Tristan Wagner, laureate of the ERC Consolidator Grant (Alina Esken/Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology)

Wagner's project, baptised EnLightEn, targets the so-called C1-metabolism. The C1-metabolism describes the capacity to utilise one-carbon molecules (such as carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, methane, etc.) as energy and even carbon sources. Wagner´s work is focused on the microbial life operating this metabolism in the absence of oxygen, where they play a crucial role in many biogeochemical cycles and biological matter degradation. “We want to look into the molecular details of this metabolism, which is so relevant for many processes occurring on our planet”, Wagner said. “Unfortunately, 85-99 percent of these weird microbes cannot be isolated so far, restricting the study of their enzymes. The core concept of EnLightEn is to bypass the need for a pure culture by using microbial enrichment or even environmental biomass. During the past years, my group proved that studying enzymes from such a complicated biological sample is feasible. We hope to shed light on more C1-transformation enzymes that are not yet fully understood. I am very happy and proud of the ERC support to pursue this important research quest.”