PhD defence

PhD defence

You can't see them with the naked eye, but they are highly likely to pose a threat to our health: microplastics. These tiny plastic particles are present everywhere in the environment, including within our bodies. On science platform The Conversation molecular biologist Meiru Wang offers valuable insights…

This thesis describes biochemical investigations of glucocerebrosidase (GBA), the lysosomal β- glucosidase that is deficient in Gaucher disease (GD).

Ecotox is located in an ambitious surrounding at the Leiden University. It is an initiative of both institutes Institute of Environmental Sciences (CML) and Institute of Biology Leiden (IBL).

The ambition of the Medical Systems Biophysics and Bioengineering group led by Alireza Mashaghi is to develop and use physics and engineering concepts and tools for pathophysiology, diagnostics and therapy.

Do large deletions represent a risk during CRISP/CAS9-mediated genome editing in plants?

Self-assembly is an abundant process in nature and is vital to many processes in living organisms.

The Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science (LIACS) of Leiden University proudly establishes the Blaise Pascal chair. The chair applies for one year and is meant to strengthen the cooperation of the Leiden computer science research with foreign institutes.

Supervisor: S.F. Portegies Zwart Co-Supervisor: A.G.A. Brown

Streptomyces present a valuable platform for natural product discovery. Lugdunomycin is a novel angucycline-derived polyketide from Streptomyces sp QL37, with unprecedented skeleton and antimicrobial activity.

Solar energy harnessed by plants and algae has great potential to be converted into biofuels for future generations.

Inflammatory skin diseases such as psoriasis and atopic dermatitis can severely impact both the physical and social aspect of a patient’s life. Aberrant inflammatory responses are thought to be a major causative factor in these disorders, but an abundance of different factors contribute to the development…

An accurate description of reactive scattering of molecules on metal surfaces often requires the modeling of energy transfer between the molecule and the surface phonons. Although ab initio molecular dynamics (AIMD) can describe this energy transfer, AIMD is at present untractable for reactions with…

Promotor: J.G.E.M.Fraaije, Co-promotor: A. Kros

Multiple stars, that is two or more stars composing a gravitationally bound system, are common in the universe.

Assessing and implementing new diagnostics strategies for stratifying patients

What are the mysteries behind soft condensed matter?

Promoter: J.G.E.M.Fraaije, Co-promotor: A. Kros

The largest genus within the Phyllanthaceae family is a group called Phyllanthus L. Recent studies have shown, that Phyllanthus is paraphyletic with the genera Glochidion, Breynia and Synostemon nested within it.

Drug induced organ toxicity is the main problem of the drug development and drug usage in the clinic. The liver and kidneys are the most sensitive organs towards drug induced toxicity.

In this thesis unconventional tools based on fluidic interfaces were developed to study the surface and interfacial chemistry of graphene, to characterize the intrinsic properties of graphene, to disentangle the effects of substrate and of the environmental factors, and to improve handling protocols…

We study the interplay of topology and geometry with chirality for several passive and active systems, employing both analytical and numerical methods.

Can birds - like people- ‘see’ voices and learn how to sing by listening and watching?

One of the main challenges in the development of an effective anti-cancer vaccine is the generation of an adequate and directed cellular immune response.

The main aim of this thesis was to unravel the signaling and regulatory networks that drive tumor cell migration during breast cancer metastasis.

All life on earth contains DNA, which is used to store biological information. Organisms compact their DNA in order for it to fit inside their cell(s).

Promotor: Prof.dr. A. P. IJzerman, Co-Promotor: Dr. L.H. Heitman

Balsaminaceae is a diverse plant family characterized by a huge floral morphological diversity.

Develop EPR instrumentation and methodology to investigate intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs).

Animal Sciences’ contributions to the Host-Microbe Interactions research theme focus on the interaction of animal hosts with pathogenic microbes but also the beneficial role of the gut microbiome.

Education in (Chinese) Medicinal Plants associated to the Hortus botanicus in Leiden - Which Traditional Chinese Medicinal plants can be grown in the Hortus? - Establishing of a database which Chinese medical plants are available in Dutch Botanical Gardens - Data validation (correct identification,…

Streptomyces are bacteria abundant in soil that participate in diverse and complex interactions. These bacteria are the main producers of the antibiotics we currently use in the clinic.

Source: Structure , Volume 22, Issue 8, pp. 1120-1139 (2014)

Streptomyces bacteria are a valuable source of natural products, many of which are used in the clinic or in biotechnology.

Some species of proteins which can form liquid-like condensates, also exhibit growth into fibers (or fibrils). One particularly interesting set of such proteins are those that are associated with neurodegeneration in which the fiber growth may be related to the pathological fibrils observed in disea…

Streptomyces are filamentous bacteria that produce more than two-thirds of known antibiotics.

The probability for dissociation of molecules on metal surfaces, which often controls the rate of industrially important catalytic processes, can depend strongly on how energy is partitioned in the incident molecule. There are many example systems where the addition of vibrational energy promotes reaction…

Promotor: J.A. van Veen, Co-promotor: E.E. Kuramae

Promotor: P. J. J. Hooykaas, Co-promotor: R. Offringa

Nonadiabatic energy transfer from the translational motion (T) of a molecule impinging on metal surface to the metal’s electrons may determine whether the molecule can lose enough energy to adsorb or react.

Promotores: Prof.dr. E.F. van Dishoeck, Prof.dr. C.P. Dullemond

We aim to unravel the molecular mechanisms involved in the transformation of eukaryotic cells by Agrobacterium.

Promotor: Prof.dr. I.A.G. Snellen, C.U. Keller

This thesis aims to improve the detection from ultra-weak single emitter by enhancing their emission properties with plasmonic nanostructures. We exploit the wet-chemically synthesized single crystalline gold nanorods (GNRs) as our basic frameworks in the whole studies, simply because of their unique…

Planets are formed in disks of gas and dust around young stars.

Bacteriophages, or phages for short, are the most abundant biological entity in nature. They shape bacterial communities and are a major driving force in bacterial evolution.

Taxonomy as a science has accumulated data and knowledge for more than 250 years.

Until the 1990s, the only known planets were those in our Solar System. Three decades later, several thousand exoplanets have been discovered orbiting stars other than the Sun, and substantial efforts have been made to explore these strange new worlds through spectroscopic analyses of their atmosphe…