Microbial Sciences'contribution to the Development & Disease research theme is to perform world-class research to understand cellular morphogenesis, growth, development and virulence of microbes.

In the last decades, activity-based protein profiling (ABPP) has emerged as a powerful chemical tool that may aid the ever-challenging drug discovery process.

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

The CIGR comprises research groups from the Institute of Biology Leiden (IBL), the Leiden Institute of Chemistry (LIC), the Leiden Academic Centre for Drug Research (LACDR) and the Leiden Institue of Physics (LION).

Mashaghi lab conducts research at the interface of physics, engineering and biomedicine. We develop and use theoretical and experimental approaches to address basic and applied research problems.

Do you have questions about the specialisation Molecular, Cellular and Organismal Biology? Please contact us.

Source: Br. J. Pharmacol., Volume 172, Issue 3, pp. 940-55 (2015)

Paul Brakefield, Professor of Evolutionary Biology at the Institute of Biology in Leiden (IBL) has been awarded an ERC Advanced Grant for his research. He will receive 2.5 million euro to develop his research programme over a period of five years.

Promotores: Prof.dr. F.P. Israel, Prof.dr. P.P. van der Werf

On 23 April 2021, Professor Alfred Vertegaal from the Department of Cell and Chemical Biology at the Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC) delivered his inaugural lecture ‘Unraveling and exploiting cellular communication codes’. Vertegaal used the opportunity to describe how research in the field…

Promotor: Prof.dr. J. Kuiper, Co-promotor: Saskia C.A. de Jager

Synthesis and application of chemical biology tools to study immunomodulatory signaling lipids.

Fundamental understanding of molecular reactions on metal surfaces is important for improving heterogeneous catalysis.

With the powerful electron microscopes at NeCEN we study abnormalities in cells of blood vessels in cardiovascular disease, the interaction between pathogens and hosts in infectious diseases, molecular processes that cause cancer and the interaction between drugs and target proteins. Drug development…

Do you have questions about the master’s specialisation Molecular Genetics and Biotechnology? Please contact us.

It is the dream of Professor Susana Chuva de Sousa Lopes to grow fertile egg cells in the lab. But she says there is a long way to go in her discipline until that is possible. This is the message of her inaugural lecture on 29 June 2020, the first digital inaugural lecture at Leiden University.

An external visitation committee gave the Institute of Biology Leiden (IBL) an outstanding assessment. In terms of research quality and relevance to society, the IBL gets the highest score: excellent. The increase with five new female professors also receives praise from the committee.

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

Plants, algae and cyanobacteria have the amazing capacity to perform delicate photophysical and photochemical processes of light capture, excitation transfer, charge separation and catalysis in fluctuating living environments. As a consequence, photosynthetic proteins and membranes form dynamic architectures.…

Thomas Bakkum en Tom van der Wel, two PhD candidates from the Leiden Institute of Chemistry, have both won poster prizes at the EMBL Chemical Biology Conference 2018 in Heidelberg.

Laboratory, observation and modeling work on the dissociation of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in interstellar environments and the formation of new molecular species through the fragmentation process.

The Aging and Immunity group is led by Dr. Amanda Foks. In this group we aim to investigate how aged immune cells contribute to atherosclerosis and identify novel therapeutic targets and strategies to extend health span and inhibit cardiovascular disease.

Tackling key challenges of Chemical Biology and Medicinal Chemistry to aid drug discovery is one of the focus areas of Leiden University. To this end, the Leiden Early Drug Discovery & Development network (LED3) was established by the Leiden Institute of Chemistry (LIC), the Institute of Biology Leiden…

At Molecular Physiology we teach the following courses within the Leiden Institute of Chemistry's Chemistry and Life Science and Technology programmes.

Find out how to apply for Molecular, Cellular and Organismal Biology at Leiden University by following our step-by-step guide.

How do plant defense genes get activated?

Intrigued by the way cells autonomously regulate their fate, we strive to understand and visualize cellular processes as the basis of Cell Signaling.

The specialisation consists of 120 European Credit Transfer System (EC) points and includes courses and electives (30-60 EC) and and one or more research projects (60-90 EC).

Science, Leiden Institute of Chemistry (LIC)

New research published in the Journal of Leukocyte Biology suggests that these changes to the behavior of the immune system are persistent and can continue even after diet is improvedAlmost everyone knows that improving your eating habits will most likely improve your health. What most people may not…

Research at the BIOSYN group is comprised of the following research themes:

When the immune system attacks cancer, the tumour modifies itself to escape the immune reaction. Researchers at LUMC published on this subject in Nature on 28 June.

Leiden physicists are helping Wageningen plant researchers to study unpredictable plant embryos. For this, they are using a novel two-photon fluorescence microscope, aided by a 30 thousand euro ZonMW grant.

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…

Leiden and Austrian researchers have succeeded in further uncovering how a plant cell passes on the growth hormone auxin in a directional manner to the next cell. Three proteins that cling together in a bunch appear to be essential for this important transport process. ‘This discovery solves a crucial…

An international group of scientists has discovered that certain cells of our immune system – the so-called T cells – communicate with each other and work together as a team. To fight an infection they stimulate each other’s growth, but at the same time, they inhibit each other when there is a surplus…

The goal of hit and lead optimization is to optimize suitable chemical starting points that can modulate a drug target. The methods and technologies used are similar to those in Hit Discovery, but once the compound has shown activity in an animal model, it moves from 'hit' to 'lead.'

Science, Institute of Biology Leiden (IBL)

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…

Promotor: E. Bouwman, Co-promotor: S. Bonnet

The studies reported in this thesis were situated in the context of an innovation of Dutch secondary school biology curricula. As in any innovation, the practical knowledge of teachers determine the outcomes through the decisions they make while planning and teaching their lessons. The aim of the studies…

Can the pink-pigmented microbe Methylobacterium extorquens be genetically engineered to convert the sustainable raw material methanol into antibiotics?