A complex community of microbes develops in the infant gut shortly after birth. We call this community the infant gut microbiota. The microbiota influences the health of the infant, which makes the composition and function of the infant gut microbiota an important topic to study.

The work described in this dissertation contributes to a better mechanistic understanding of nanoparticles in vivo. To achieve that goal, we used the zebrafish as a highly predictive pre-screening model of nanoparticles.

Promotor: J.A. Bouwstra Co-promotor: A. El Ghalbzouri

Antibiotic resistance, caused by widespread use of antibiotics, leads to bacterial infections that are difficult, if not impossible, to treat and is a major worldwide health concern.

Taking as a point of departure the Italian American community in Boston and its process of collective remembrance surrounding Saint Anthony’s Feast, we addressing the limits and potential of montage.

Promotor: P.J.J. Hooykaas, Co-Promotores: P.B.F. Ouwerkerk, M. Wang

Nowadays, it is well known that hydrogen and helium (and small traces of lithium and beryllium) were created shortly after the Big Bang, while the heavier elements are created in the cores of stars at different evolutionary stages. When these stars explode as supernovae, they expel metals synthesised…

Promotor: P.D. Grünwald

Epithelial-mesenchymal plasticity (EMP) and tumor cell migration play an important role in cancer progression, and an improved understanding of the mechanisms underlying these concepts is essential for developing new targeted approaches.

Inverse problems are problems where we want to estimate the values of certain parameters of a system given observations of the system. Such problems occur in several areas of science and engineering. Inverse problems are often ill-posed, which means that the observations of the system do not uniquely…

In this work, I explore the creation of new methods that optimize simulations of the gravitational N-body problem. Specifically, I take advantage of the recent popularity of Machine Learning methods to find tools that can suit this problem.

Promotor: Prof.dr. B. van de Water

By growing in a soil plants change the biotic and abiotic properties of the soil in which they grow.

Promotors: Prof.dr. P.J. Punt, Prof.dr. C.A.M.J.J. van den Hondel

In this thesis, the role of plant-mediated soil legacy effects in shaping aboveground plant-insect interactions was investigated.

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…

In this thesis it is posed that the central object of preference discovery is a co-creative process in which the Other can be represented by a machine. It explores efficient methods to enhance introverted intuition using extraverted intuition's communication lines.

Promotores: H.A. Udo de Haes, H.H.T. Prins, Co-promotor: H.H. de Iongh

In this thesis I highlight the applications of Oxford Nanopore Technologies (ONT) sequencing. This technique is a relatively new approach in the sequencing field, where nanopores are embedded in a membrane, DNA molecules are pulled through nanopores and an electrical current serving as the sequencing…

This thesis examines enzyme domain architecture and engineering to improve the breakdown of lignocellulose and starch, abundant biopolymers crucial for sustainable biofuel and biochemical production. Carbohydrate-active enzymes (CAZymes) facilitate this degradation, but the structural complexity of…

Regeneration is the ability of an organism to restore damaged or lost tissue with a functional replacement, and without scarring. Many lizards can regenerate their tails.

Op 17 november 2021 verdedigde Cyril-Igor Grigorieff het proefschrift 'The Regime for International Air Carrier Liability'. Het promotieonderzoek is begeleid door prof.dr. P. Mendes de Leon en prof.dr. V. Correia (University Paris Saclay).

The rapidly increasing commercial application of metallic nanoparticles within products will inevitably enhance the amount of NPs being released into soil.

The endocannabinoid receptors CB1R and CB2R are involved in a plethora of processes, and consequently are involved in many pathological conditions. Their wide distribution makes the CBRs both an interesting therapeutic target and hard to study.

Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) has become the standard for business processes diagrams.

This thesis focuses on using liposomes in two different treatment strategies; vaccination (or immunotherapy) and delivery of a small molecule, and in two different disease models; cancer and atherosclerosis.

The soil-dwelling, filamentous bacteria of the genus Streptomyces are renowned for their production of useful secondary metabolites including antibiotics. The work described in this thesis provides new insights on the role and regulation of antibiotic production and resistance in these bacteria.

The energy system is at the heart of two of the greatest challenges of the 21st century: decreasing CO2 emissions to meet the ambitions of the Paris agreement while fulfilling the growing energy demand associated with the economic aspirations of a growing world population.

Promotores: C. J. ten Cate; M. A. Ainslie. Co-promotor: W. Slabbekoorn

Promotor: Prof.dr. R. Verpoorte, Co-Promotor: Dr. Young Hae Choi

Solute carrier (SLC) transporters are a large and diverse class of relatively understudied transmembrane proteins.

Interactive exploration of large volumes of data is increasingly common, as data scientists attempt to extract interesting information from large opaque data sets. This scenario presents a difficult challenge for traditional database systems, as (1) nothing is known about the query workload in advance,…

In condensed matter systems electron-electron interactions, negligible in everyday metals, can dramatically alter the electronic behavior of the system. Examples of such altered behavior include high-temperature superconductivity and modulation of the electron density.

The following report discusses a survey on the topic of the Sustainable Development Goals that was distributed among researchers at Leiden University in the month of November 2021.

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

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

The development of new environmentally sound technologies is seen as a key route towards achieving sustainability.

“Temminck’s Order” is the scientific biography of Coenraad Jacob Temminck (1778–1850), a Dutch naturalist and the first director of ’s Rijks Museum van Natuurlijke Historie in Leiden.

The AT-Hook Nuclear Localized 15 (AHL15) gene belongs to a plant-specific gene family of DNA-binding proteins. Overexpression of AHL15 in Arabidopsis thaliana delays developmental phase transitions whereas its loss of function causes a slight acceleration.

Hospital pharmacies face significant challenges: the demand for sterile drug reconstitutions is increasing, while specialized personnel remain scarce. Automation offers a potential solution, but its practical implementation in hospitals is still unclear.

This thesis studies the geometry of representation varieties and character stacks. These are spaces parametrizing the representations of a finitely generated group, typically the fundamental group of a compact manifold, into an algebraic group G.

Microbiome composition of the spermosphere and the rhizosphere of wild and modern bean accessions grown in an agricultural and a native soil from Colombia was characterized by metagenomics and cultivation-dependent approaches.

Op 7 december 2021 verdedigde Georgina Kuipers het proefschrift 'Beschadigd vertrouwen'. Het promotieonderzoek is begeleid door prof.mr. W. den Ouden en prof.dr. M.A. van der Steen (EUR).

Promotor: J. Zaanen

The key characteristic of active matter is the motion of an emergent collection (such as a flock of birds), which is driven by the consumption of energy by its active components (i.e. individual birds).

Promotor: Prof.dr. M.L. van Hecke, Co-Promotor: V. Vitelli

A key step in the synthesis of oligosaccharides and glycoconjugates is the formation of the glycosidic bond.

Image segmentation is a fundamental task in computer vision, with applications ranging from medical diagnostics to archaeological research.

Promotor: Prof.dr. D. Bouwmeester

In 2005 groeven archeologen van de gemeente Leiden een 2700 jaar oude boomstamkano op. Deze boomstamkano wordt nu door wetenschappers van Material Culture Studies nagebouwd met behulp van replica's van ijzertijd-werktuigen. De wetenschappers willen zo onder meer beter inzicht krijgen in het bouwproc…