How soil microbial composition impacts structure and composition of the aboveground plant and animal communities?

Therapeutic proteins have revolutionized the treatment of many severe diseases like multiple sclerosis, haemophilia, diabetes and many more. Unfortunately, even recombinant proteins with structures (almost) identical to those of their endogenous counterparts often induce the formation of anti drug antibodies…

This thesis compiled and analysed the currently largest global wetland plant trait database containing more than 1200 species from over 200 studies.

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

Wetland plants are distinguished from plants of other terrestrial ecosystems by their adaptations to specific habitat stresses, including waterlogged and flooding and the subsequent abundance of phytotoxic compounds.

PURPOSE: To monitor the biodistribution of IgG1 aggregates upon subcutaneous (SC) and intravenous (IV) administration in mice and measure their propensity to stimulate an early immune response.

This thesis focuses on amyloid proteins, a class of proteins that convert into amyloid fibrils.

PURPOSE: Determine the effect of minute quantities of sub-visible aggregates on the in vitro immunogenicity of clinically relevant protein therapeutics.

Developing robust and comprehensive analytical methods to size and quantify subvisible particles in biopharmaceutical products.

What are the behaviours of plant traits throughout various points in the growing season in a radiative transfer model framework and how well can this knowledge be integrated through data assimilation to provide priors for robust local and global vegetation products and analysis?

What are trait-trait relationships in wetlands? To what extent the so-called leaf economics traits deviate from terrestrial ecosystems? How traits specific to wetland plant relate to plant strategies? What’s the relationship between wetland plant traits to the ecosystem functioning (e.g. productivity,…

An international team including Peter van Bodegom shows how trait variability can be incorporated in Essential Biodiversity Variables to allow monitoring how organisms respond to global change. They published their results in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution.

Which genes are involved in woodiness and associated traits such as drought stress resistance, flowering time, stem elongation, life span, and plant herbivory, and how do these QTLs overlap?

Students searched for a student project about mycorrhizal fungi and soil aggregation

Promotor: P.J.J. Hooykaas, Co-Promotor: E.J. van der Zaal

Read-Urban was a first project to investigate whether policy recommendations can be made with the aid of linked data collections and data science and to gain experience with the success factors for such a process.

Oxidation is a common degradation pathway that affects therapeutic proteins and peptides during production, purification, formulation, transportation, storage and handling of solid and liquid preparations. In the present work we review the scientific literature about structural and biological consequences…

Questionnaires or concentration tasks can be used to screen for anxiety, but so too can EEG recordings – at least indirectly. The frequent mind wandering of anxious people can also be seen on MRI scans. These are just some of the findings of clinical neuropsychologist Dana van Son. PhD defence on 24…

Promotors: W. Jiskoot; G.J. Witkamp, Co-promotor: M.R. Nejadnik

Promotor: Prof.dr. J.P. Abrahams

Promotor: G.P. van Wezel

Which traits and/or trade-offs determine benefits of being deciduous or evergreen?

1: What is the relative importance of alfa and beta biodiversity in polar ecosystems, and how does intraspecific variation influence this? 2: How can we use remote sensing to determine functional biodiversity (within communities) in polar ecosystems? 3: Temporal and spatial scales of functional biodiversity:…

Promotores: W.J.G.M. Peijnenburg, G.R. de Snoo, Co-promotor: M.G. Vijver

Promotor: Prof.dr. W.J.G.M. Peijnenburg, Co-promotor: Dr. ing. M.G. Vijver

Together with a large international team of scientists, researchers Peter van Bodegom and Nadia Soudzilovskaia of the Leiden Institute of Environmental Sciences (CML) have created maps of variability in plant trait distribution across the globe. The new maps have been published in Proceedings of the…

Promotor: W. Jiskoot, Co-promotor: A. Hawe

SMR can be used to measure the mass of adsorbed protein to nanoparticles with a high precision in the presence of free protein.

Promotores: J.A.van Veen, P.L.G.Klinkhamer. Co-promotor: E.E.Kuramae

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PhD Defence

PhD Defence

Development of an aggregated impact indicator to measure decoupling.

Which traits did change due to the invasion process of plants and how do these traits contribute to the invasiveness of such species. What is the role of carbohydrate accumulation? What is the function of carbohydrate accumulation in plants? Is genetic variation depleted in invasive species under se…

PhD Defence

Promotor: W. Jiskoot, Co-promotor: H.A. Every

Solar energy is used by photosynthetic organisms to drive energy required cellular processes. Is absorbed by two groups of pigments, located in the LHCs.

While colloidal aggregates are often undesirable due to their random shapes, we exploit them as a starting point to synthesize patchy particles.

Biotechnologist Boris Zacchetti enhanced the performances of Streptomyces bacteria, which are used to produce antibiotics and valuable enzymes. He discovered that certain genes are responsible for the formation of particles with highly different sizes, which has a negative impact on production performances.…

Promotores: Prof.dr. P.M. Brakefield, Prof.dr. B.J. Zwaan (Wageningen Universiteit)

Amerindian intra- and inter-insular relationships and social organization in the pre-colonial Windward Islands.

Promotor: P.M. Brakefield