In this thesis, the focus lies on studying glucocorticoid receptor dynamics in living cells with the aim of understanding how this transcription factor finds its DNA target sites to regulate transcription.

Kros

Single-celled organisms have stiffer DNA than multicellular lifeforms like humans and rice. Theoretical physicists managed to simulate the folding in full genomes for the first time to reach this conclusion. Publication in Biophysical Journal on February 7.

Individual molecules are extremely hard to see through feeble fluorescence. Tiny gold nanorods serve as new antennas to intensify their signal 500 times. Publication on 24 February in Angewandte Chemie.

Promotor: M.T.M. Koper, Co-Promotor: F. Calle-Vallejo

Vibrating carbon monoxide molecules adsorbed at the surface of a salt crystal stop moving after a few milliseconds. Scientists now discovered this is dominantly due to the emission of electromagnetic waves. The role of the chemical bond at the surface thereby appears to be less important than previously…

Promotores: G.W. Canters, T.J. Aartsma

To construct catalysts that can produce fuels from CO2 innumerable times, we need to learn much more about how catalysis works. Irene Groot is conducting groundbreaking research into catalysis at the atomic level.

During my PhD research, I studied the photon statistics of light emitted by a microcavity that contains a single quantum dot (QD) on resonance.

Publication in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Metals surfaces form a group of effective catalysts for the reaction of small molecules such as hydrogen (H2).

Lecture

The last blog of Leiden Law Blog of 2018 was written by Ladislav Kováč. He discusses the proposal for the Single-use Plastics Directive of the EU which was agreed upon on 19 December.

Density functional theory (DFT) with so-called semi-local exchange has been remarkable accurate for some dissociative chemisorption reactions on metals, but it has notoriously failed for others. A team of researchers from the University of California at Irvine and the Leiden Institute of Chemistry have…

Promotores: Prof.dr. J. A. Bouwstra, Prof.dr. W. Jiskoot

Majorana fermions in superconductors are the subgap quasiparticle excitations that are their own antiparticles.

Paleobotanist Menno Booi discovered that 250 previously described fossil tree species are objectively not distinguishable; they belong to only one single species.

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.

Promotor: H.V.J. Linnartz

Promotor: E.R. Eliel, Co-Promotor: M.J.A. de Dood

This book project explores the changing dynamics of marriage and family life in postwar Japan based on an examination of the life histories of single mothers.

Promotor: J.W.M. Frenken

We have studied the impact of particle shape anisotropy, multivalent interactions and flexibility on systems of micron-sized colloidal particles.

Twenty years from now, the world population is estimated to be around 8.7 billion people, compared to the current 7.3 billion. In combination with the improvements in living standards and the corresponding growth in consumption, this will result in an enormous increase in the demand for food, consumables,…

This research group is interested in the physics of living cells, especially their cytoskeleton dynamics under defined external stimuli.

Materials are either gas, liquid or solid, based on how their molecules respond to temperature and pressure. But what if the building blocks are self-spinning particles instead of ordinary molecules? Theoretical physicists found out what determines the phase of those artificial materials. Publication…

Emily den Boer of LAPP visited the Canal Cups Expo, displaying the plastic cups cleaned up by students after Leidens Ontzet.

Physics and Engineering Approaches to Biomedicine and Pharmacology

A full overview of THEOR PhD theses.

Lecture

Those pesky raindrops that get you wet on your way to work, are formed high up in the sky from clouds of water vapour. The process of nucleation describes the way this happens. Edgar Blokhuis of the Leiden Institute of Chemistry developed a theory to describe this transition more precisely. Chemists…

The major and ultimate aim of metabolomics is to obtain an answer to a specific biological or clinical question.

Due to the modern techniques of combinatorial chemistry and high-throughput screening, data on the biological activity of many millions of compounds is known. However, it is still very difficult to transfer this data into knowledge: if we know that compounds A and B bind to a certain protein with high…

The main goal of the THEOR CHEM group, headed by Prof. Geert-Jan Kroes, is to characterize, and to accurately predict the outcome of chemical reactions at gas-solid and liquid-solid interfaces. Here the solid surface is typically a metal or an ice surface. These goals are important to many areas in…

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).

Research at the Catalysis and Surface Chemistry group is comprised of the following research themes: