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

Four Leiden researchers will be gaining experience at prominent international research research institutes funded by a Rubicon subsidy from NWO. One international researcher will be coming to Leiden.

Lecture

Lecture, This Week's Discoveries

Producing offspring of a crop without sowing and that is even bigger than the parent plant. According to Leiden researchers this can be achieved by overstimulating a single gene that rejuvenates cells, including bringing them back to the embryonic phase.

The GMP Facility facilitates development and production of Advanced Therapy Medicinal Products (ATMPs) and chemical (peptide) synthesis.

Can new variants of daptomycin and the polymyxins be found?

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.

Bacterial biocatalysis constitutes a sustainable alternative for high-value chemicals production by enabling the utilization of renewable feedstocks.

The Horizon 2020 project CoSTREAM aims to improve our understanding of the co-occurrence of stroke and Alzheimer’s disease. It has long been known that both diseases share underlying causes, but their exact interaction or link is not fully understood. CoSTREAM combines multiple factors to identify and…

Promotor: G.P. van Wezel

Aspergillus niger is an important industrial producer of organic acids and enzymes producing large amounts of spent fungal biomass.

Despite being the object of intense study, embryonic development has been difficult to model due to a number of reasons. First, complex tissues can be comprised of many cell types, of which we probably only know a subset.

Inactivating mutations in BRCA1 or BRCA2 genes predispose to several types of cancer.

Promotor: B. van de Water

Does the mineralocorticoid receptor play a role in the effects of cortisol and synthetic glucocorticoids on the immune response?

How is Pol θ responsible for T-DNA integration, and how do other DNA double-strand break repair pathways interact with Pol θ? How may we manipulate T-DNA integration to stimulate error-free integration at a predetermined genomic site?

By carrying out fundamental research and providing excellent education, universities become a breeding ground for innovation and entrepreneurship.

At the division of Biopharmaceutics, we aim to develop and test new therapeutic approaches to limit or even prevent the development of atherosclerosis in order to reduce the number of acute cardiovascular syndromes such as myocardial infarction or stroke.

PhD defence

Vaccines are an extraordinary category of biopharmaceuticals. They are usually prophylactic and come in many types, from whole bacteria to peptides and nucleic acids. They are very cost effective and almost every human on the planet is vaccinated. The latter mandates that vaccines have to be extremely…

PhD defence

Macrophages and atherosclerotic lesions The infiltration of monocytes in the arterial wall, their differentiation to macrophages, and the subsequent accumulation of cholesterol in these macrophages initiate the process of atherosclerosis. We study the importance of specific genes in macrophages for…

The ongoing increase in antimicrobial resistance combined with the low discovery of novel antibiotics is a serious threat to our health care.

The research described in this thesis focused on identifying novel drug targets and synergistic combinations for triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC), a virulent subtype of breast cancer with a dismal prognosis and limited therapeutic options.

In populations with a seed-bank, individuals can temporarily become dormant and refrain from reproduction until they can become active again. The repository of all dormant individuals in the population is called the seed-bank. Seed-banks are observed in many taxa, including plants, bacteria and other…

Discovery of metastasis promoting candidate drug targets

We investigate reaction systems, a novel computational model gleaned from the biochemical reactions taking place in living cells and information processing in nature.

Various companies in the plant biotech industry will test a recent Leiden discovery in their crops. The ‘Pol Theta’ technology is developed in Leiden and makes it possible to reduce undesired side effects during genome engineering of plants.

Is criminal disenfranchisement compatible with a democratic political order? This article considers this question in light of a recently developed view that criminal disenfranchisement is justified because it expresses our commitment to democratic values.

What is my contribution to the world? This is what students and researchers at Leiden University College The Hague (LUC) ask themselves every day. They want to make a difference with their teaching and research in the four global challenges of ‘Peace and Justice,’ ‘Sustainability,’ ‘Diversity’ and ‘…

What are key regulators of plant ageing that can reverse ageing in plants (rejuvenation), and how can we use this knowledge to improve crop plants?

Dutch researchers have developed a new tool to label DNA for studying chromosomes in live cells. The tool is non-invasive and can be applied in culture but also in living organisms, such as zebrafish embryos. The team published their findings in the journal Nucleic Acids Research.

A new analysis of the king cobra genome by Michael Richardson, Christian Henkel (IBL) and collaborators at the IBL and Naturalis, Helsinki and Singapore has been published in

Atopic dermatitis (AD) is a common inflammatory skin disorder characterised by various epidermal alterations. Filaggrin (FLG) mutations are a major predisposing factor for AD and much research has been focused on the FLG protein.

The group Theoretical Physics of Life Processes, led by Helmut Schiessel, focuses on the physics of chromatin, the DNA-protein complex that fills the nuclei of eukaryotic cells.

Chromatin is an ubiquitous protein-DNA complex that forms the structural basis of DNA condensation in all eukaryotic organisms.

The RNA guided endonuclease based on the CRISPR/Cas system of Streptococcus pyogenus is a potent new tool for genome engineering in plants.

Cellular stress response pathways are activated upon exposure to chemicals and help organisms deal with various molecular dangers (e.g. oxidative stress). When these pathways become hyper-activated an adverse response takes place and cells die, which may lead to organism-level toxicity such as drug-induced…

The CIGR brings together a diverse range of unique expertise in genome research rooted in biology, chemistry and physics. Members of the CIGR investigate genome folding and genome transactions. An important aspect is direct as well as long term relevance for medicine.

The key question addressed in this family study is whether the psychophysiological and neurocognitive abnormalities often reported in SAD patients are heritable and can thus be found in family members of SAD patients as well. Determination of heritability of these deficiencies is essential for endophenotyping.…

We are committed to provide you with meaningful, rigorous and quality graduate experiences in a personalized environment with a cutting edge research infrastructure and internationally renowned supervisors.

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

We focus on a better understanding of the mechanisms of cancer drug resistance and metastasis.

About nine million people worldwide contract tuberculosis each year. Research into new treatment for this disease has received fresh stimulus with more efficient techniques and a new understanding of how the tuberculosis bacteria works.

PhD defence

In July, 2018, the Institute of Biology Leiden hosted the 11th conference of the Zebrafish Disease Models Society (ZDMS), an international association dedicated to the advancement of basic and clinical research using zebrafish disease models. More than 350 researchers from all over the world gathered…

Reading emotions from others’ faces strengthens social relationships. But how is that for children with hearing loss? Can they learn to read faces just as easily as hearing children? The study by Yung-Ting Tsou and colleagues shows that daily