Promotor: E.F. Smets, Co-promotor: J. Geml

A political-legal study of rights invocation by pollution victims in China and Indonesia

This project intends to provide the required knowledgebase for the design of novel mild intervention protocols to prevent fungal food spoilage.

Promotor: E.F. Smets Co-promotor: J. Geml

How presence, abundance and enzymatic activities of AM and EM fungi differently affect soil carbon sequestration processes?

How did slaves in the eighteenth century manage to empower themselves and their kin, and why did this become all the more difficult in the nineteenth century?

In Dutch society’s discussions about remembering the colonial past, voice is often used as a metaphor for empowerment ('we must raise our voices'), whereas silence is often used as voice’s negative counterpart, signifying a loss or lack of power ('we will no longer be silenced'). Yet, silence is expressive:…

The experiences of ethnic ‘Other’ females have – until recently – been widely overlooked in the study of sport. There continues to be a need to produce critical scholarship about ethnic 'Other' girls and women in sport and physical culture, in order to represent their complex, multifarious and dynamic…

Professor of Fungal Genetics and Biotechnology Arthur Ram explains how fungi can help us be more sustainable.

Ebru Alazi ‘hacked’ an enzyme-producing system in the fungus Aspergillus niger in order to produce renewable energy more easily. She manipulated the fungus, making it produce more pectinases: enzymes mainly used in the food industry and in the production of renewable energy, such as biofuels. Promotion…

Environmental scientist Nadia Soudzilovskaia has been awarded the prestigious, international Bessel-Forschungs prize issued by the Von Humboldt foundation. This German award is issued to outstanding foreign mid-career scientists that collaborate with German researchers. ‘The combination of different…

Beautiful microscopic specimens play the leading role in the course 'Biodiversity Plant' for first-year Biology students. Normally these are put back in storage right after the course. But not this year!

A special relationship between plants and fungi, which plays an important role in carbon storage in soil, has the potential to slow down climate change. However, the amount of carbon stored in soil is decreasing as a result of human activity. This is what researchers say in a publication in Nature Communications.…

Fungi living in vanilla plants play a role in the development of the taste and smell of vanilla, according to Shahnoo Khoyratty of the Institute of Biology Leiden. PhD defence on 27 October.

Music from a compostable cello, photographs and scents of fungi and a woven tapestry. With her upcoming multimedia project Super Organism, visual artist Suzette Bousema enables people to experience the underground fungal network with all their senses. Environmental scientist Nadia Soudzilovskaia and…

What are the global relationships between environmental conditions and abundance of distinct types of mycorrhizal fungi in soil and plant roots?

Leiden researchers have compiled information collected by scientists over the past 120 years into a database of plant-fungal interactions. This important biological data is now freely available for researchers and nature conservationists. Publication in New Phytologist.

Carel Stolker will retire as Rector Magnificus of Leiden University on 8 February. As a retirement gift he is setting up a fund for first-generation students and academics. You too can donate.

Promotores: Prof.dr. H. van Veen & Prof.dr. W. de Boer (Wageningen University)

Fungi germinating in the lungs of patients. Doesn’t sound too nice, does it? Luckily, humans can deal with this normally, and we are able to clear the infection before anything comes to harm. However, in people with health issues, Aspergillosis can cause a lot of damage, especially if the fungus becomes…

Research aims: Identification of key genes involved in programming the cellular architecture of A. niger & Genetic engineering of A. niger in order to improve its secretory capacities and rheological behavior under industrial fermentation conditions.

This functional genomics project aims at understanding the biology of the underlying mycelium differentiation and autolysis processes in much more detail.

Promotor: Prof.dr. E.F. Smets, Co-promotor: Dr. V.S.F.T. Merckx

PhD defence

On 19 April, CML researcher Nadia Soudzilovskaia gave an invited talk at The Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) about her VIDI-funded work on impacts of mycorrhizas on ecosystem functioning. During this project she will closely collaborate with GBIF colleagues.

We aim to develop A. niger strains that produce more starch degrading enzymes even in the absence of starch.

This thesis aims to investigate the effect of tripartite interaction between microbial inoculants, the plant, and herbivore insects on the rhizosphere microbiome and volatilome. We investigated the rhizosphere microbiome and volatilome of tomato plants exposed to insect herbivory and/or inoculated with…

Promotor: J.M. van den Broek Co-promotor: M.C. de Vries

What are the functions of autophagy in the filamentous fungus Aspergillus niger?

This thesis describes the antimicrobial discovery strategy developed in our group, the den Hertog Group at the Hubrecht Institute. It includes a cultivation-based screening approach for novel antimicrobial agents from the source of fungi, and a bacterial time-lapse imaging approach for antimicrobial…

Nadia Soudzilovskaia (CML), Martijn Bezemer (IBL / NIOO) and Harrie van der Hagen (ecologist at Dunea) gave an interview to NPO1 Radio about the TERRA-Dunes project.

Agrobacterium tumefaciens, a gram-negative plant pathogen belonging to the family Rhizobiaceae, is the causative agent of crown gall disease, which can affect many plant species including agronomically important ones.