{"id":44043,"date":"2019-02-27T15:23:27","date_gmt":"2019-02-27T14:23:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/test.steinmuehle.de\/blog\/2019\/02\/27\/the-steinmuehle-team-won-three-awards-at-once\/"},"modified":"2026-06-18T15:42:06","modified_gmt":"2026-06-18T13:42:06","slug":"the-steinmuehle-team-won-three-awards-at-once","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/steinmuehle.de\/en\/blog\/2019\/02\/27\/the-steinmuehle-team-won-three-awards-at-once\/","title":{"rendered":"The Steinm\u00fchle team won three awards at once"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lena Jou\u00dfen and Janina Seip, along with their advisor Dr. Dietmar von der Ahe, won the \u201cJugend Forscht\u201d competition<\/strong><\/p>\n

Things couldn\u2019t have gone better at the \u201cJugend Forscht\u201d regional competition for Central Hesse, held at the Klein-Linden Community Center, as Steinm\u00fchle\u2019s participation resulted in three awards: Students Lena Noelle Jou\u00dfen and Janina Seip, together with their teacher Dr. Dietmar von der Ahe, won the Project Prize, the Environmental Prize, and the Advisor Prize.<\/p>\n

\u201cKeep going, make the most of this project\u2019s potential, and enter the competition again.\u201d That was the jury\u2019s advice exactly one year ago, when the then-11th-grade students first presented their hypothesis to the panel of experts at the \u201cJugend Forscht\u201d competition. They suggested that the wax moth (Galleria mellonella) might offer a solution to the plastic pollution problem. For the experiment, honeycombs infested with wax moth larvae had been placed in plastic bags. Just a short time later, the plastic was riddled with holes and crumbled. Laboratory tests confirmed that the larvae do indeed break down polyethylene (PE). <\/p>\n

In Search of the Right Enzyme
\n<\/strong>To delve deeper into the topic, Lena and Janina set out to investigate whether the larvae of the greater wax moth harbor so-called symbionts in their intestines\u2014that is, microorganisms that help break down plastic. Their work on the freshly deceased insect\u2014including isolating the bacteria into a culture medium, allowing the bacteria to grow, creating bacterial clones, and performing the polymerase chain reaction (PCR)\u2014revealed that a specific gene from the bacteria was amplifying \u2014and at the same time raised the question of whether this gene exists in nature as part of a similar enzyme that may already be known, and whether this enzyme, through its ability to break down carbon compounds, can make a decisive contribution to plastic degradation. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve taken a decisive step closer to the result,\u201d reports biology teacher Dr. Dietmar von der Ahe. \u201cIt\u2019s not just one bacterium. We\u2019ve narrowed down the list of bacterial candidates to about two dozen,\u201d says the expert. Conducting further research in this area is a matter of time and, above all, cost. <\/p>\n


\n wasn\u2019t discouraged by setbacks<\/strong>. According to the biologist, who holds a Ph.D., it looked as though the research wouldn\u2019t work out until November. The twelfth-grade students carried out over 200 PCR reactions and ultimately refused to let themselves be discouraged. Thanks to plenty of words of encouragement, effective coordination, and a well-thought-out project strategy, Steinm\u00fchle also won the Advisor\u2019s Award. The timely and pressing topic of \u201cplastic\u201d was a fitting focus for the environmental award. The competition\u2019s Sponsorenpool Hessen awarded the 1,600-euro project prize in recognition of the students\u2019 persistent, precise, and determined work. <\/p>\n

Prerequisites Provided by the Steinm\u00fchle Student Lab
\n<\/strong>The Steinm\u00fchle student lab, equipped by the Friends of Steinm\u00fchle Association, is an essential prerequisite for the work of the young Steinm\u00fchle researchers. Jasmine Weidenbach, chairwoman of the Friends of Steinm\u00fchle, had applied for funding (5,100 euros) from Roche Germany as the main sponsor in June 2014. Headquarters approved the application a month later, and the lab was set up in the fall of 2014. The official opening of the lab took place in February 2015. <\/p>\n

The national “Jugend Forscht” competition is organized by the foundation of the same name. Its goal is to inspire young researchers to pursue mathematics, computer science, the natural sciences, and technology, and to foster interest in these career fields. <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lena Jou\u00dfen and Janina Seip, along with their advisor Dr. Dietmar von der Ahe, won the \u201cJugend Forscht\u201d competition Things couldn\u2019t have gone better at the \u201cJugend Forscht\u201d regional competition for Central Hesse, held at the Klein-Linden Community Center, as Steinm\u00fchle\u2019s participation resulted in three awards: Students Lena Noelle Jou\u00dfen and Janina Seip, together with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":44044,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"give_campaign_id":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[90,96,85,105],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44043","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-contests-awards","category-ecology-and-sustainability","category-news","category-stem"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/steinmuehle.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44043","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/steinmuehle.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/steinmuehle.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steinmuehle.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steinmuehle.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44043"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/steinmuehle.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44043\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48964,"href":"https:\/\/steinmuehle.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44043\/revisions\/48964"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steinmuehle.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44044"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/steinmuehle.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44043"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steinmuehle.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44043"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steinmuehle.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44043"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}