Anne Küntzel is an external doctoral student at the Institute of Veterinary Physiology. Under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Dr. Since September 2015, Petra Reinhold has been working in the project "Volatile Organic Substances (VOC) of pathogens and hosts as a biomarker of bacterial infections" funded by the DFG. This is an interdisciplinary cooperation project between veterinary and human medicine.

With the aim of detecting and evaluating volatile biomarkers for the detection of Mycobacterium avium subspecies paratuberculosis (MAP) infections, Ms Küntzel first examined the VOC pattern of mycobacteria under in vitro conditions. Their experimental approach involved three different MAP strains cultured on 5 different media, in different dilution stages and for differently long periods of time. Ms Küntzel's analyzes showed that over 100 emitted VOCs were detectable in the gas phase of the cultured tubes, 43 of which were clearly associated with the growth of MAP. The directional results of Ms Küntzel's study showed for the first time the extent to which the culture medium used influences the composition of the volatile metabolite formed by one and the same bacterial strain. Furthermore, it became clear that the duration of the cultivation has a considerable influence on the concentrations of the volatile substances, some VOCs increase over time, others decrease in their concentration. Overall, the findings confirm the hypothesis that the analysis of volatile biomarkers has the potential to indicate a growth of mycobacteria earlier than is possible in the present bacteriological investigation.

The results of her investigations were published in the Journal of Breath Research (JBR, impact factor: 4.18) by Mrs. Küntzel under the title "Effects of biological and methodological factors on volatile organic compound patterns during cultural growth of Mycobacterium avium ssp.paratuberculosis". With this - her first - she immediately placed herself among the 'Highlights of 2016', the 10 best publications published in JBR last year.

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