Filamentous Actinobacteria, such as Streptomyces, produce a plethora of chemically diverse bioactive metabolites that have found applications across medicine, agriculture and biotechnology.

Can we link multiple components from herbal extracts with their biological activities?

Our object is to identify and characterize transcription factors involved in lignocellulosic biomass degradation in the filamentous fungus Aspergillus niger.

Our focus is to optimize the fungal cell wall to both increase chitin production and chitin extractability.

Can chemical safety assessment be improved with zebrafish embryo-based reporter assays?

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

The current projects of the Molecular Physiology group focus on proteins of the endocannabinoid system, kinases and antibacterial targets. MSc- and BSc-students can contact Jessica van Krimpen-Kraaijenoord to apply for research internships.

Large areas of space are filled by molecular clouds that consist of gas and dust grains that are the remnants of dead stars. When these clouds start collapsing, the decreasing temperature and increasing density cause gas particles to start accreting onto dust grain surfaces.

The Institute of Biology Leiden (IBL) is an internationally oriented institute for research and education in biology.

Can a new proteomics workflow be developed to link genes and gene clusters to bioactive molecules, identify novel compounds and enhance the production in the Streptomyces lividans enzyme?

The goal of hit discovery is to identify suitable chemical starting points to modulate a drug target. A hit can be, a.o., a small molecule, a protein or mRNA. Hit identification is performed via rational design, genome mining, (targeted) library screening, or in silico approaches.

Professor at the School of pharmaceutical sciences, University of Geneva - Switzerland

We like to welcome you kindly to the Dutch Extract Library.

In Microbial Sciences, we perform multidisciplinary research to understand the structure and function of microbes at all levels of biological organization, from small molecules and cellular structures at atomic resolution to multicellular communities.

The long-held desire - to link structure directly to function and to explain molecular mechanisms based on basic chemical or physical principles - is finally coming closer, satisfying not only our scientific curiosity but also offering new solutions to the many challenges in the field of health, energy…

This project aims at describing the Khoisan languages !Ora (Korana/Griqua) and !Ui of South Africa.

This thesis is about the study of hydrocarbons via infrared spectroscopy.

Mechanical forces are known to play an important role in bacterial colonies. In this dissertation, we study the self-organization at various stages of growing bacterial colonies, and focus on the mechanical effects of cell growth.

Heterogeneous catalysis is one of the fundamental processes of modern life, being common in industrial refinery and hydrogen vehicles, all the way to the living cell. The dissociation of H2 on Cu(111) is an important benchmark system for studying heterogeneous catalysis, with a large and varied amount…

Since May, Assistant professor BioTherapeutics Lu Su works in our faculty. Although she is still young, she already worked in many different fields and co-operated on two publications in big scientific journals. How did she become so successful and what motivates her to keep researching the possibilities…

Promotor: F.P. Israel, Co-Promoter: R. Meijerink

In the research programme Microbial Sciences we perform state-of-the-art research in the field of biotechnology and microbial sciences.

An integrated approach for the simultaneous prediction of polypharmacology and binding affinity/potency of small molecules.

What is the population size/structure and distribution of tiger and leopard inside the Bardia National Park (BNP) compared with the population outside? What is the movement and home range and conflict pattern in time and space of tigers and leopards inside the BNP compared with outside? What constitutes…

Can drugs that target host signaling pathways be used to eradicate antibiotic-resistant bacteria?

ChEMBL is a large-scale drug discovery database containing bioactivity information primarily extracted from scientific literature.

This thesis focuses on data found in the field of computational drug discovery. New insight can be obtained by applying machine learning in various ways and in a variety of domains. Two studies delved into the application of proteochemometrics (PCM), a machine learning technique that can be used to…

Using artificial intelligence to find new antibiotics. With that, researchers from Leiden University are nominated by magazine KIJK for the Best Tech-idea of 2021. From September 14 onwards people can vote to crown one of the nominees as the winner.

The opportunity to explore a new, exciting research topic. That is how Lennart Schada von Borzyskowski describes his successful application for the NWO XS grant. It comprises 50,000 euros, which the researcher from the Institute of Biology Leiden (IBL) will spend on investigating a more sustainable…

Current means of fighting bacteria are no longer as good as they used to be because of antibiotic resistance. These days, people are dying from bacterial infections that could have been cured fifty years ago.

To facilitate the search for new antibiotics. That is the aim of Gilles van Wezel, professor molecular biotechnology at the Institute of Biology Leiden (IBL). He wants to do this by looking at similarities in the DNA of antibiotic-producing bacteria. Van Wezel has been awarded an ERC Advanced grant…

Actinobacteria are Gram-positive bacteria that have a complex multicellular life cycle and are well known for their ability to produce a wide range of bioactive natural products (NPs).

Source: J Cheminform, Volume 7, Issue 1 (2015)

Streptomyces are multicellular, Gram-positive bacteria in the phylum of actinobacteria which produce a high amount of bioactive natural products of which the expression is tightly coordinated with the life cycle.

Identifying novel antibiotic compounds to tackle antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Researchers from Leiden University and VU Amsterdam will unite through a project now funded by NWO’s Open Technology Programme (OTP), which awarded the collaboration nearly one million euros.

Heterogeneous catalyzed processes are highly significant to the chemical industry. Dissociative chemisorption (DC) of molecules on surfaces is always considered as a step with a high degree of rate control for heterogeneous catalysis.

Professor Biological chemistry Nathaniel Martin from the Institute of Biology Leiden is interviewed by the Netherlands Innovation Network on innovative scientific approaches. He talks about his work on designing new antibiotics and developing new molecules to make resistant bacteria susceptible again…

This thesis describes a study from both a theoreticaL and an experimental point of view.

Promotor: H.V.J. Linnartz

Despite the history of studies on methanol formation from CO2, the dominant elementary reaction steps that constitute the chemical mechanism for this catalyzed process are not determined.

The formation and evolution of galaxies is fundamentally driven by the formation of new stars out of cold gas.

For the first time, researchers were able to grow organoids from snake venom glands. The lab-grown 3-D structures can produce snake venom molecules. This is a major step in finding treatments to tackle snakebite, which causes over 100,000 deaths each year. Publication in top journal Cell.

Bacteria found in soil specialise in the colony by division of labour. Some of the bacteria produce antibiotics, even when it comes at the expense of their individual reproduction success, to defend their colony against competitors. Publication in Science Advances.

Hybrid zones occur where two species meet and produce offspring (hybrids). Typically, hybrids show a considerable reduction in fitness. In this thesis two hybrid zones are treated.