Lab News

Ecem Yuksel, Remco Kort, and colleagues wrote a new review about the different bacteria in our intestines that can degrade a certain kind of dietary fiber called pectin, and how this can benefit our gut health. Check out the review here! (Picture from here) The human gastrointestinal microbiota, densely populated with a diverse array of

The new academic year kicked off on 2 September 2024 with the Opening Academic Year. This year’s theme was ‘Reasons for Hope’. Bas was interviewed as part of the panel and spoke as the Director of AIMMS about how we are committed to making a positive impact on life and the environment by accelerating breakthroughs

C2W:Mens & Molecule is a Dutch publication platform (including a magazine) for independent science journalism for chemistry and life sciences. Our current research on usage of alternative cofactors (e.g. replacing the NADH/NAD couple) in novel metabolic engineering strategies for microbial biotechnology has recently feature in this magazine. We carry out this research in collaboration with

Maaike and Pranas participated in the third summer school on Economic Principles in Cell Biology that took place on the 8-11th July, 2024, in Paris and online. Lab PhD students Francesco and Luis also attended the lectures online. Maaike was one of some 30 participants selected for in-person attendance, and Pranas gave one of the

Since cells have finite biosynthetic resources for protein synthesis, a rise in one protein concentration is generally at the expense of that of others. A logical consequence is then that phenotypic traits trade-off: cells cannot excel at everything. They cannot grow fast and be very stress tolerant and adaptive to new conditions at the same

Some time ago, we started an initiative in the lab to collect all the best (and worst) practices on how to reconstruct, curate, and simulate genome-scale metabolic models (GEMs). A total of 7 colleagues, including a visiting PhD student Gioele Lazzari from the University of Verona, and a MSc rotation student Steven Wijnen, have put

Microbiologists are searching for a universal theory of how bacteria form communities based not on their species but on the roles they play. A new article in the popular science magazine Quanta has highlighted our work on metabolic preferences and their genomic markers. How can we identify rules of microbial communities? What are the traits

The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) granted the FERMI Perspective proposal led by Herwig Bachmann from the Systems Biology Lab. The project aims to accelerate the protein transition by improving the taste of plant-based products through fermentation by microbes. With colleagues from the Wageningen University and TU Delft and 10 industrial partners, the project

Which metabolic enzymes should a cell change in concentration to give rise to a large change in steady-state metabolic flux? Which enzymes should an experimentalist inhibit to reduce the flux the most? Why are some kinase-phosphatase couples in cellular signal transduction ultra-sensitive to changes in signals, while others are not? What is the function of

Bacteria grow in communities of many co-occurring species in , e.g., in your gut, in soil, or in the ocean. A fundamental process in these communities (more specifically, communities of heterotrophic bacteria, i.e., bacteria that utilize organic carbon sources) is that bacteria take up substrates (basically, food) like sugars and amino acids from the environment