Christian Sohlenkamp studied biotechnology at the Technical University of Berlin, Germany. His diploma thesis was titled "Phosphatidylcholine synthase in rhizobia". He did his doctoral studies at the Max-Planck-Institute for Molecular Plant Physiology in Golm, Germany , about the mechanisms of ammonium transport in Arabidopsis thaliana under the supervision of Michael Udvardi. He received his doctoral title from the Technical University of Berlin in 2001. As a Feodor-Lynen Fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, he did postdoctoral work in Mexico at the Nitrogen Fixation Center (CIFN) of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) with Otto Geiger working on the role of bacterial cell surfaces in the pathogenic and symbiotic interactions between bacteria and eukaryotic hosts. He currently holds the position of an Assistant Professor (Investigador Titular A) at the Center for Genomic Sciences (formerly CIFN) at the UNAM ( Cuernavaca ) which he joined in 2002. Christian Sohlenkamp was crucially involved in the discovery of the phosphatidylcholine synthase pathway which constitutes a major route for phosphatidylcholine formation in bacteria and he was the first to describe the AMT2 family of ammonium transporters in plants. The focus of his work is on the biosynthesis, turnover and degradation of bacterial membrane lipids. Ongoing projects include "Structure-function studies of sinorhizobial phosphatidylcholine synthase", "Biosynthesis and modificaction of phospholipids in Streptomyces and other actinomycetes", "Understanding the acid stress response in Rhizobium tropici", "Biosynthesis of hydroxylated ornithine lipids in Rhizobium tropici and Agrobacterium tumefaciens". For their research the group uses tools of microbiology, molecular biology, biochemistry and genomics.

Genetics