Fraunhofer IME, Gießen

The Business Area Bioresources of the IME is dedicated to identifying new lead structures by using organisms as biological resource, focusing on innovative strategies for applications in medicine, agriculture and industrial biotechnology. Insect biotechnology being the actual core activity of the business area represents an emerging and globally prospering research field with enormous value-creation potential. Today the unit, located at the Technology and Innovation Center in Giessen (TIG), plays a leading role in insect biotechnology in Germany.

With over one million described species, insects represent the most diverse and evolutionarily successful group of organisms in the world. State-of-the-art analytical, proteomic, transcriptomic and bioinformatic tools are applied in order to identify new antimicrobial peptides, low molecular weight compounds and enzymes, thus making the impressive molecular diversity of insects accessible to the red, green and white biotechnology fields.

Furthermore, the business area is engaged in the evaluation of certain insect species such as the red flour beetle Tribolium castaneum as model or indicator organisms for the assessment of chemicals in line with the European Community REACH regulation, ecotoxicological studies or the analysis of food and animal feed.