Key publications of the Aging and Immunity group

Key publications of the Cardiovascular Pharmacology group

Microbial Sciences' contribution to the Host-Microbe Interactions research theme is to investigate how beneficial or disease-causing microbes associate and interact with their host.

Charlotte Holt is a second year International Justice student at Leiden University College. She did an internship at Academia Neerlandesa; a language school that offers Dutch language courses to medical professionals. ‘An internship can become very beneficial for those who wants to discover where their…

Through his project we will unravel the global regulatory networks that control gene expression in Streptomyces bacteria and allow them to properly respond to major changes in the environment; we will then harness this knowledge to activate and identify novel antibiotics

BlaC is the β-lactamase of Mycobacterium tuberculosis. We show that it can recover from inhibition by clavulanic acid and that phosphate helps it do so.

Promotor: Prof.dr. G.P. van Wezel

Almost all bacteria are enveloped by a cell wall that provides cellular protection.

Bacteria are highly complex and diverse organisms that have adapted to survive in ecological niches ranging from the most extreme to the most heterogeneous environments.

The roles of shame, guilt and social access in adolescent aggression

Having a chronic somatic condition can result in a variety of impairments in patients’ daily lives, including not only physical complaints such as pain, itch, and fatigue, but also problems of negative mood and impairments in social relationships. Next to disease characteristics, individual difference…

The filamentous bacteria Streptomyces are widespread inhabitants of terrestrial soils.

The increasing resistance of pathogenic bacteria to antibiotics necessitates the discovery of new medicines.

Promotor: G.P. van Wezel

Streptomyces bacteria are a valuable source of natural products, many of which are used in the clinic or in biotechnology.

Promotor: Prof.dr. G.P. van Wezel, Co-Promotor: E. Vijgenboom

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.

Streptomyces are filamentous bacteria that produce more than two-thirds of known antibiotics.

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.

Streptomyces are bacteria abundant in soil that participate in diverse and complex interactions. These bacteria are the main producers of the antibiotics we currently use in the clinic.

Plants are colonized by an astounding number of microorganisms that can provide different life-support functions, including nutrient acquisition and protection against (a)biotic stresses like drought or pathogen attack.

Bacterial chemosensory arrays are protein assemblies that are the key structural and functional component for motile bacteria to sense their internal or environmental chemical signals.

Streptomyces are prolific producers of enzymes and secondary metabolites, including more than 50% of all clinical antibiotics. This makes them highly attractive for medical, biotechnological, and industrial purposes.

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

The goal of target discovery is to identify and validate proteins and biological pathways that are involved in the disease process. Modulating these target proteins and pathways with small molecules, therapeutic proteins or other biomolecules (e.g. mRNA) could deliver an effective and safe drug or v…

Streptomyces present a valuable platform for natural product discovery. Lugdunomycin is a novel angucycline-derived polyketide from Streptomyces sp QL37, with unprecedented skeleton and antimicrobial activity.

Actinobacteria are well known for the production of bioactive natural products, many of which have applications in the fields of human, animal and plant health. Subject of this thesis are the anthracyclines, glycosylated aromatic polyketides with potent anticancer activity.

This thesis describes the structural and biochemical characterization of the β-lactamase BlaC from Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb), and the Alr and YlmE proteins from Streptomyces coelicolor A3(2).Mtb is the main cause of tuberculosis.

Filamentous Actinobacteria, such as Streptomyces, produce a plethora of chemically diverse bioactive metabolites that have found applications across medicine, agriculture and biotechnology.

Promotor: G.P. van Wezel, Co-promotor: D. Claessen

Antibiotic-resistant bacteria pose a major health threat. Addressing this challenge requires among others the development of new antibacterial compounds. The research described in this thesis focuses on discovering novel antibiotics from soil bacteria, specifically Streptomyces and Paenibacillus.Despite…

Promotor: Prof.dr. G.P. van Wezel

The bacterial cell wall is a nearly universal structure that offers protection and gives the cell its shape. However, environmental stressors, such as cell wall-targeting antibiotics and hyperosmotic conditions, can induce bacteria to shift to a wall-deficient state. It is unknown whether the lack of…

In this dissertation, the types of context Dutch speakers need to interpret the poly-interpretable word ergens ‘somewhere/anywhere’ are studied.

Our mission is to bring together research and practice focused on the improvement of mental health and the enhancement of treatment / psychotherapy success. To reach this goal we focus on the following paths:

Promotor: G.P. van Wezel, Co-promotor: Y.H. Choi

Antibiotics are a class of medicine most people take for granted. But pathogenic bacteria are becoming more and more resistant to our antibiotics, and this poses a great challenge for future treatments. There is thus a great societal need to identify new molecules that can address new targets and be…

Actinobacteria are Gram-positive bacteria that have a complex multicellular life cycle and are well known for their ability to produce a wide range of bioactive natural products (NPs).

The endophytic microbiota is a community of various microorganisms that reside in plant tissue. These microbes are known to promote plant health and resilience, and their members do not simply exist side by side.

Microbial Sciences' contribution to the Bioactive Molecules research theme is to discover new bioactive molecules and enzymes and unravel their mechanisms of action, regulatory networks, and the (bio)synthetic pathways required for their production.

Knowledge of mental distress and resilience factors over the time span from before to after a stressor is important to be able to leverage the most promising resilience factors and promote mental health at the right time. To shed light on this topic, we designed the RESIST Study, in which we assessed…

Early Childhood Community Practitioners’ analyses of new mother’s challenges in Alexandra Township South Africa: a collaboration between academics and practitioners

Our mission is to advance the understanding of mental health of individuals with a history of stress and/or trauma through rigorous interdisciplinary research, integrating insights from clinical psychology, neurobiology, and social sciences. We are committed to translating our findings into innovative…

Clinical psychology is a discipline concerned with the application of psychological science to the assessment and treatment of mental disorders.