Het herkennen van biologische soorten aan de hand van een gestandaardiseerde DNA-barcode heeft de laatste tijd een enorme vlucht genomen. Gedreven door aan de ene kant de biodiversiteitscrises en de mogelijke global change, en aan de andere kant zowel razendsnelle technologische vooruitgang als ook het vooruitzicht dat niet genoeg klassieke taxonom...
This thesis combines comprehensive microarray-based studies contributing to a better understanding of the role of bifidobacteria in relation to the human host. It reviews recently described modes of interaction between bifidobacteria and human gastrointestinal cells and highlights the unique characteristics of the genus Bifidobacterium that are ind...
Most organisms are exposed to a continuously changing environment throughout their life. For instance the ambient temperature is usually not constant and many species are exposed to a diverse range of anthropogenic stressors like toxic compounds. Moreover, individuals are prone to genetic changes due to mutation and allelic recombinations. All thes...
The requirements for alignment of capped RNA leader sequences along the viral genome during influenza transcription initiation (“cap-snatching”) have long been an enigma. Previous work on Tomato spotted wilt virus (TSWV) transcription initiation has revealed that this virus displays a preference for leaders with increasing base complementarity to t...
The objectives of this Ph.D. thesis were (1) to optimise genomic selection in dairy cattle with respect to the accuracy of predicting total genetic merit and (2) to optimise a dairy cattle breeding program using genomic selection. The study was performed using a combination of real data sets and simulations. Real data sets consisted of dense marker...
Following a general introduction, this book includes details of metabolomics of model species including Arabidopsis and tomato. Further chapters provide in-depth coverage of abiotic stress, data integration, systems biology, genetics, genomics, chemometrics and biostatisitcs. Applications of plant metabolomics in food science, plant ecology and phy...
Current genetic marker repositories are not sufficient or even are completely lacking for most farm animals. However, genetic markers are essential for the development of a research tool facilitating discovery of genetic factors that contribute to resistance to disease and the overall welfare and performance in farm animals. By large scale identifi...
Potato (Solanum tuberosum L.) is nowadays the most important non-cereal food crop in the world. It is prone to huge annual losses due to late blight, the disease caused by the oomycete pathogen Phytophthora infestans. Modern management of late blight necessitates the use of multiple resistance (R) genes, which requires efficient pipelines for ident...
As fossil fuels are depleting, there is a clear need for alternative sustainable fuel sources. One of the interesting alternatives is hydrogen, which can be produced from biomass by bacteria and archaea. To make the application feasible, organisms are needed which have high hydrogen productivities as well as the capacity to handle a wide variety of...
In this thesis various fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) technologies are described to support genome projects, plant breeding and phylogenetic analysis on tomato (Solanum lycopersicum, 2n=24). Its genome is 980 Mb and only 30 % are single copy sequences, which are mostly found in the euchromatin regions. These regions in all 12 chromosomes...
