The external tissues of plants and animals are colonized by microbial communities termed microbiota. When organisms are exposed to environmental pollutants, these substances will therefore encounter microbiota at the exposure interface.

The focus of this thesis is how stars like our Sun and planets like Jupiter, Saturn, and Earth are formed.

Neurodegenerative diseases, including Parkinson’s disease (PD), are increasing in prevalence due to the aging population. Despite extensive study, these diseases are still not fully understood and the lack of personalised treatment options that can target the cause of the diseases, rather than the symptoms,…

It has now been well established that shocks and turbulent motions in the intra-cluster medium (ICM) generated through cluster mergers can produce large-scale synchrotron emission.

In this thesis an activity-based probe was discovered that could visualize the activity of PLAATs. With an optimized gel-based ABPP assay in hand, screening of a compound library led to the discovery of alpha-ketoamides as a hit for PLAAT3.

This thesis pioneers diatom molecular identification and quantification through genome-scale methods, with four key aims: (i) reviewing DNA/RNA sequencing methods in aquatic biomonitoring to highlight their strengths and limitations;

Despite the fact that gold nanoparticles (GNPs) are one of the most studied nanoparticles, there is still a necessity for new approaches allowing for effective protective coating to enable wider use of GNPs in biomedical applications.

The thesis addresses the long-term dynamical evolution of hierarchical multiple systems.

We investigate the buildup of galaxies from various vantage points. The first two chapters focus on the stellar content of galaxies, especially the distribution of stellar masses at birth and potential variations therein in various galactic environments.

A century ago, it was unclear whether the stars in the sky were clustered in groups, or widely spread in the universe.

To gain more insight into the evolutionary development of orchid flowers and fruits, the orchid species Erycina pusilla was studied. The evolutionary origin of the median petaloid sepal, the callus on the labellum, and the stelidia was studied.

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.

Protein–protein complexes are formed via transient states called encounter complexes that greatly influence the formation of the stereospecific complex.

Developing robust algorithms and theory for establishing cause-effect relationships from observational data that scale up to large data sets

Promotor: Prof.dr. J.P. Abrahams, Co-Promotor: N.S. Pannu

There is an urgent need for more physiologically relevant cell culture methods to guide compound selection in pre-clinical stages of the drug development pipeline.

The PID-directed shift in PIN polarity has been broadly accepted as one of the essential mechanisms for the regulation of auxin transport polarity.

The plant hormone auxin plays a central role in the growth and development of plants. Auxin acts in a concentration dependent manner and polar cell-to-cell transport of this hormone determines its distribution in the tissues of plants. This polar auxin transport is mediated by several families of auxin…

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.

Promotor: A.P. IJzerman

Promotor: Prof.dr. W.Th.F. den Hollander, Co-promotor: R. Fernandez.

Detecting planets during their formation stages is crucial for understanding the history and diversity of fully developed planetary systems like our own. However, observing young planets directly is challenging because they are often deeply embedded within their host protoplanetary discs, rich in gas…

This research delves into the unique cultural approach of the Tenggerese people, an Indigenous community in East Java, Indonesia, regarding elderly care. It focuses on their traditional practices of bakti (‘filial piety’) and sayan (‘mutual aid’), deeply ingrained in the community's lifestyle and va…

On a structural level, the properties featured by a majority of mechanical metamaterials can be ascribed to the finite number of soft internal degrees-of freedom allowing for low-energy deformations.

M. Danhof, Co-promotores: J. Freijer, A. Yassen

A management strategy has been developed for field margins to reduce pesticide drift to non-target areas and to promote biodiversity on arable land. To this end, 3 and 6 m wide strips along the edges of winter wheat, sugar beet and potato crops have been left unsprayed with herbicides and insecticides…

Does a high quality prairie restoration in an urban/agricultural landscape provide invertebrates necessary for a sustainable ecosystem?

In this thesis, we used genetically engineered mouse models to identify genes and pathways that are involved in ILC formation and in the development of resistance to FGFR-targeted therapy.

Plant architecture has distinct forms in different plant species, but also within a species the finalarchitecture of a plant is determined by its gradual development and changes therein induced by environmental conditions during the plant’s life cycle.

Promotores: H.W. Lenstra, K. Belabas (University of Bordeaux)

Promotor: Prof.dr. J. Kuiper

There is an increasing amount of attention on EU and its Member States contributions to implementation of two landmark agreements: the Paris Climate Agreement and the UN Agenda 2030 with Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Absent from the current literature is an analysis of the political effect of…

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.

Promotores: P. Stevenhagen, L. van Geemen (Università degli studi di Milano), Co-Supervisor: Ronald M. van Luijk

Even though more than 4000 extra-solar planets are known today, only a small fraction of these has been captured in an image. To better understand the planet formation mechanisms in solar-like environments we started the Young Suns Exoplanet Survey (YSES).

Promotor: W.Th.F. den Hollander Co-Promotor: F.M. Spieksma

One of the key limitations of the direct imaging of exoplanets at small angular separations are quasi-static speckles that originate from evolving non-common path aberrations (NCPA) to which the primary adaptive optics system is inherently blind. The main focus of this thesis is the development and…

With the energy transition toward a renewable energy supply and a CO2-neutral economy, electrification of the energy system is rising in importance, which leads to the challenge of long-term storage of renewable electricity.

Circumstellar discs are the reservoirs of gas and dust that surround young stars and have the potential to become planetary systems.

Synthetic microswimmers take an important place within the interdisciplinary field of active soft matter.

The clinical potential of applying synthetic lethality to cancer treatment is famously demonstrated by the BRCA1/PARP1 paradigm: a tumor specific defect in BRCA1 – a component of the DNA double-strand break (DSB) repair pathway homologous recombination (HR) – results in a remarkable sensitivity to PARP1…

The experiments described in this thesis employ local lentiviral knockdowns in brain areas of female zebra finches followed by behavioural assays consisting of preference and Go/Nogo tasks.

Acute cardiovascular syndromes, including myocardial infarction or stroke, are the principal cause of death in the Western society. The main underlying pathology of cardiovascular diseases is atherosclerosis, which is caused by the accumulation of lipids and inflammatory cells in the vessel wall, in…

Promotor: B. vd Water, T. Schmidt, Co-Promotor: E.H.J. Danen

To limit the effects of climate change, global average temperature since pre-industrial measurements are to be kept well below 2 °C preferably even at 1.5 °C.

Promotors: Prof.dr. T.H.W. Bäck, Prof.dr. B. Sendhoff (Technische Universität Darmstadt)

The skin is our natural barrier and lipids are a key part of this barrier. In the outer skin layer, the stratum corneum (SC), lipids form a densely organized structure dependent on the composition of these lipids.

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

The aim of this thesis is to expedite and ensure the systematic accuracy of clearance scaling from adults to paediatric patients, with a special focus on drugs undergoing hepatic metabolism.

Less than 1 in 10 drug candidates that enter phase 1 clinical trials actually gets approved for human use.