Nora Linscheid and Lea Gram Hansen awarded Novo Scholarships

The Novo Scholarships are annually awarded to talented students within the biomedical, pharmaceutical and biotechnological sciences. The grant consists of a monthly allowance of 7.000 kr for the duration of the MSc thesis projects - and this year two DynaMo Master Students are among the awardees.

Natural plant compounds beneficial to humans

Plants produce a vast array of natural compounds that are beneficial to humans as pharmaceuticals, flavouring and colouring agents, and in many other applications. These plant compunds, especially the socalled glucosinolates found in cruciferous plants, informally known as the cabbage family, are central objects of research for both of the two awardees.

Novo Scholarship recipient Nora Linscheid in the lab

Biology and biotechnology student Nora Linscheid is presently working on her master project entitled "Transport engineering to increase production of plant natural products". Her scientific approach makes use of manipulating membrane transporters to direct metabolite flow within plants and thereby increase the accumulation of a desired compound. Her project aims at increasing the accumulation of glucosinolates in seeds of the plant Arabidopsis thaliana, using the glucosinolate pathway as a model system to compare and evaluate different transport engineering strategies. Nora is undertaking her master project at DynaMo under the supervision of Associate Professor Hussam Nour-Eldin.

Yeast platform for production of cancer-preventives

Novo Scholarship recipient Lea Gram Hansen pollinating plants

The other Novo Scholarship recipient Lea Gram Hansen, is also a student of biology and biotechnology at the University of Copenhagen. Her master project is called “Engineering of glucoraphanin, a cancer-preventive glucosinolate, into Saccharomyces cerevisiae” and she works under the supervision of Head of DynaMo Professor Barbara Ann Halkier.  The aim of Lea’s master project is to discover how to produce the natural compund glucoraphanin in a microbial cell factory, namely in yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae). Glucoraphanin, a special kind of glucosinolates produced by the broccoli plant, is a substrate which makes broccoli extra healthy to humans; it is thought to detoxify the body and is associated with a reduced risk of developing cancer and cardiovascular diseases. Lea's foremost task is to engineer yeast to enable it to express the glucoraphanin genes, but Lea is also using protein engineering in order to learn more about and optimize the glucoraphanin enzymes.

The Novo Scholarship Programme offers a year of support to more than 30 master students from Denmark and Southern Sweden to complete their thesis within subjects related to Novozymes' or Novo Nordisk’s research areas.  All recipients of the 2014 scholarships are invited to the Novo Scholarship Symposium which takes place on 22 January 2014 at Novo Nordisk in Bagsværd. The symposium will be opened by Danish Minister for Science, Innovation and Higher Education Morten Østergaard.