Events
SEMS Seminars: Prof Sonja Billerbeck, Unlocking the Yeast Toxicome, Imperial College London
Centre for Bioengineering
Prof Sonja Billerbeck
Date: 18 February 2026 Time: 15:00 - 16:00 
Location: SEMS Seminar Room, 3rd floor, Engineering Building
Title:
The yeast toxicome: A potential source for new antifungals for biocontrol, food and human health.
Abstract:
Fungal pathogens are an emerging threat to human health and food security. Very few fungicides are available and resistance to these is rising. It is a long-standing challenge to develop new antifungals. As eukaryotic pathogens, fungi offer very few selective drug targets and we urgently need new strategies for antifungal development. Ascomycete yeasts – such as environmental isolates of Saccharomyces cerevisiae and related species – have evolved a large set of small protein toxins, so-called yeast killer toxins (or mycocins), to compete against fungi in the environment. Previous research revealed that these toxins exhibit diverse modes of action, thus, indicating that the yeast toxicome might constitute a rich source of functionally diverse but yet-untapped antifungals. In my talk I will exemplify my group's research on the molecular functioning of these yeast-derived toxins and their modularity and engineerability towards applications in biocontrol, food, human health and biotech/synbio.
About the speaker:
Sonja Billerbeck is an Associate Professor at the Bioengineering Department of Imperial College London. She recently moved her group from the Bimolecular Sciences and Biotechnology Institute of the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. The Billerbeck lab uses a combination of synthetic biology, genome engineering, protein engineering and environmental microbiology to turn microbial functions into applications. They specifically focus on tackling fungal diseases in human health, food and agriculture and on delivering tools for non-model microbes to make their capabilities available for future food production.
Sonja holds a PhD in Bioengineering from ETH Zurich and performed postdoctoral work in yeast synthetic biology at Columbia University in New York.
Updated by: Zion Tse