Survival of bacteria under unfavorable environmental conditions, antibiotic therapy or exposure to biocides varies in nature and is based on the bacterial ability to employ a wide range of fundamentally different mechanisms, with ´antimicrobial resistance´ (AMR) being the most prominent and best studied. While there has been an increased focus of governments, industry and researchers on preventing further spread and development of AMR, other important bacterial survival strategies have been neglected although they are equally important in the context of food safety and development of AMR. Other than ´resistance´, ´tolerance´, ´persistence through dormancy´ and ´viable but non-culturable (VBNC)´ are important bacterial survival strategies in which bacteria actively change their resistance phenotype without underlying genetic changes. Although dormancy states have been known to the scientific community for many years (Persister – Hobbey et al. 1942; VBNC – Xu et al. 1982), there are still enormous knowledge gaps.

In this research context, our group is involved in:

• development of diagnostic methods for dormant cells;
• Occurrence and role of dormancy natural, clinical or food production environments;
• Induction into and resuscitation out of dormancy; 
• mechanistic understanding of dormancy phenotypes and their abilities.

Most of the pathogen detection methods available in food microbiology are qualitative (presence or absence) rather than quantitative. Qualitative assays generally include the technique of enrichment culture as a starting point but can also include molecular enrichment techniques. Enrichment culture involves adding the food (after some type of preparative step) to an appropriate selective enrichment medium and incubating for many hours to allow the target microbial cells to grow. Enrichment culture conditions are designed to meet specific growth requirements of the target organism(s) while inhibiting, to the greatest extend possible, the growth of other microorganisms. Subsequent detection methods after enrichment culture include selective plating, immunoassays as well as PCR based detection methods.

Our research group is involved in developing and evaluating advanced sample preparation and diagnostic methods that are tailored to the specific requirements of the food environments. Together with our partners we are aiming to establish easy-to-use, financially viable and reliable routine diagnostics.

Ionic liquids, organic salts with melting points below 100°C, have found application in many areas of modern science. Mainly known for their initial usage as "green" solvents, the second generation of ILs revealed their "designable" properties, leading to the development of task-specific ionic liquids. Their highly tunable nature introduced ILs as essential players in chemical synthesis and catalysis, electrochemistry, biomass conversion, fuel production and processing, liquid crystal development, biotransformation, biotechnology, life sciences and medicine.

In the past, our research group has gained considerable experience in synthesis, chemical & biological characterization and application of ionic liquids. Our current research is focused on the antimicrobial and virucidal activity of novel ILs, Formulation of antimicrobials as ILs, biotechnological applications of ILs as well as the development of Quantitative Structure-Activity/Property Relationships (QSAR/QSPR).