Dr. Maria Hoernke
We are a young, interdisciplinary team in biophysical chemistry and connected to the department of physical chemistry at Halle University and department of pharmaceutics at Freiburg University. We collaborate with groups in Freiburg, Prague, Halle, Leipzig, Jena, Erlangen, Bayreuth, Frankfurt, Vienna, Shanghai.
We work with lipid membranes and membrane-active peptides, polymers, or proteins. Using microcalorimetry, time-correlated fluorescence spectroscopy, vibrational spectroscopy, monolayers, and other biophysical methods, we investigate the selectivity of antimicrobial polymers or pH-responsive polymers designed for enhanced endosomal escape for different lipid membranes and how to design responsive particles for drug delivery. We measure and model membrane permeabilization, characterize the interactions of biomimetic compounds, and reach out to microbiology.
Contact Maria Hoernke if you are interested in doing research with us. We welcome motivated colleagues on all levels and ideas for collaborations.
NEWS
06-2025 Maria and Katharina present at the Kalorimetrietage in Leipzig
04-2025 Annika wins a poster prize at the GEM Meeting in France.
03-2025 Mehriddin starts his MSc project. Welcome!
We attend the Beam Conference 2025.
02-2025 Our paper about the loss of selectivity in antimicrobial activity is out: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.jpcb.4c05019
02-2025 Welcome Nguyen and good luck with your BSc project!
12-2024 We will have a project as part of the AGRIPoly II graduate school.
09-2024 Maria presents at the German Biophysical Society Meeting and Annika shows her poster.
05-2024 Annika defends her MSc thesis. Great success! And welcome as a PhD candidate!
04-2024 Bjarne finishes his Diploma Thesis. Congratulations.
Katharina wins one of the Poster prices at the WE-Heraeus-Seminar and Maria presents
02-2024 Maria is invited to the german meeting of the Controlled Release Society and also presents at the Freiburg Macro Colloquium.
01-2924 Habilitation presentation: the last step to venia legendi.
11-2023 Annika wins one of the Poster Flash Talk Awards and Maria presents at the czech Biophysics and Electrochemistry meeting in Prague.
11-2023 Katharina presents at the FAF meeting in Freiburg.
10-2023 Annika and Maria travel to Prague for GUV miscroscopy. Let's hope for conclusive data.
10-2023 Welcome to Bjarne for his Diploma project about archaeal lipids.
08-2023 Welcome to Annika for her MSc project about pH-sensitive polymers.
08-2023 Katharina and Maria present posters at the EBSA meeting in Stockholm
06-2023 The group has now two afiliations: Freiburg and Halle Univeristy. The Halle team is associated to the RTG 2670 BEAM Beyond Amphiphilicity.
2023 The DFG funds our project about pH-sensitive membrane permeabilization
03-2023 Our paper about the bias of PG/PE model membranes towards leaky fusion is out: https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2023/sm/d2sm01691e
03-2023 Maria presents at the GEM meeting.
09-2022 A talk and posters at the german biophysics meeting.
09-2022 Shuai defends her PhD thesis! 3 papers. Great success. Congratulations Dr. Shi!
09-2022 Our paper on Leaky membrane fusion is out. Including a Leakage Protocol. https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlehtml/2022/NA/D2NA00464J Maria contributes to a review about calcein-based assays for endosomal escape https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/mabi.202200167
05-2022 Katharina and Maria talk at the Biomembrane Meeting in Drübeck
05-2022 Shuai and Maria talk at the AC21 Meeting in Strasbourg
02-2022 Our paper on a fusogenic antimicrobial polymer is out. https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.langmuir.1c03445 Our paper about antimicrobial polycations is out. More than Leakage. https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2021/cp/d0cp05651k
04-2021 Stefanie defends her Diploma project very succesfully. Congratulations. A manuscript is planned.
04-2021 Our 3 posters are discussed lively at the European Membrane Meeting EJTEMM.
01-2021 Janina joins us for a project. Welcome!
10-2020 Anja joins us for a project. Welcome!
09-2020 Stefanie joins us for her Diploma project. Welcome!
06-2020 Kartharina joined us for her PhD project. Welcome!
03-2020 The German Membrane Biophysics Meeting was a success! Thank you everyone who contributed.
12-2019 Anja defends her PhD Thesis very succesfully. Congratulations Dr. Stulz!
11-2019 Our paper on lipid selectivity appears in Lagnmuir. pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.langmuir.9b01849
10-2019 Ndjali finishes his Master: Models for Vesicle Leakage and Binding Experiments on Lipid Vesicles
1-2019 Ndjali joins us for a project. Welcome!
11-2018 DFG funds our project about Selectivity in Membrane Permeabilization for 3 years.
9-2018 We are happy to welcome Shuai for her PhD project and Annika for her practical term!
5-2018 Anja wins another Poster Award. Well done!
3-2018 Anja wins a Poster Award. Congratulations!
1-2018 Our paper about Quantified Membrane Permeabilization is out.
ACS Nano
3-2017 The Daimler & Benz Foundation supports our research on lipid clustering for two years.