A consortium of researchers from the Leiden Institute of Physics (LION), the Institute of Biology Leiden (IBL), and the Leiden Institute of Chemistry (LIC) received a FOM program grant to develop a novel way of studying individual proteins inside a cell using gold nanorods.

On 21 March The Netherlands Centre for Electron Nanoscopy (NeCEN) hosted the Life Sciences Café. Around 60 people from neighbour companies from the Leiden BioScience Park visited the facility for cryo-electron microscopy to get a glimpse behind the scenes. Head of NeCEN Ludo Renault believes it was…

In this thesis, bioorthogonal chemistry is combined with correlative light-electron microscopy to selectively label and study pathogenic intracellular bacteria within the host immune cell.

How can novel bioimaging technologies and vertebrate model species be used to gain a better understanding of early cellular behaviours with the ultimate goal to increase our understanding of human development and disease processes?

This doctoral thesis is an effort to understand how lipid phase-separation induced by diacylglycerol analogues in lipid-based nanoparticles affects their in vivo behavior, leading to specific nanoparticle-protein communications and selective cell targeting.

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 research in this thesis is focused on tomographic reconstruction based on two imaging modalities in electron microscopy.

Promotor: Prof.dr. J.W.M. Frenken

With the powerful electron microscopes at NeCEN we study abnormalities in cells of blood vessels in cardiovascular disease, the interaction between pathogens and hosts in infectious diseases, molecular processes that cause cancer and the interaction between drugs and target proteins. Drug development…

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 European Union has invested ten million euros in the so-called iNEXT-Discovery consortium. The goal of this new consortium is to enable European researchers to extend innovative structural biology research. The Netherlands Centre for Electron Nanoscopy (NeCEN) is also part of iNEXT-Disovery, which…

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.

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.

Research groups in the Biological & Soft Matter Programme unravel mechanisms in biological processes and develop novel bio-inspired soft materials.

Promotor: J.W.M. Frenken

This thesis describes a study from both a theoreticaL and an experimental point of view.

Promotor: J.P. Abrahams, Co-promotor: T. Grüne

Festival

Physicist Daniël Geelen has developed a new microscope that uses low-energy electrons. Those are less harmful to biological and organic materials. Geelen defends his PhD thesis on May 31st.

The work in this thesis demonstrates how to obtain an atomic-scale picture of a diverse set of complex surface structures observed using STM, under disparate conditions.

There are several training oportunities within the cell observatory

The CMCB brings together a diverse range of unique expertise in microbial cell biology. Members of the CMCB investigate both model and non-model organisms, bacteria and archaea, pathogens and non-pathogens.

The CIGR brings together a diverse range of unique expertise in genome research rooted in biology, chemistry and physics. Members of the CIGR investigate genome folding and genome transactions. An important aspect is direct as well as long term relevance for medicine. The available expertise extends…

NL-BioImaging AM is a distributed research infrastructure aimed at promoting progress in the most cutting edge microscopy technologies and providing open access to these technologies to a broad community of academic and industrial users. All Netherlands bio(medical) microscopy centers participate.

STM scanning experiments on poorly conducting materials are challenging, and can cause a distortion effect. A new model corrects for this effect, allowing physicists to better study materials in their quest to understand unconventional superconductivity. Publication in Physical Review B as Editor’s…

In most applications, electrocatalysts exhibit a large surface area to volume ratio, for example using nanoparticles.

On this page you can find the current vacancies at the Van der Molen research group.

In order to gain insight into the structure and function of the molecular complexes involved in chemotaxis, we use electron cryotomography (ECT). This technique allows us to directly study microbes in their native state at resolutions capable of visualizing individual proteins.

The logo of Leiden University, with letters as small as a bacterium. Researchers from LUMC and the Institute of Biology have created the smallest logo of our university ever produced. It is a piece of fun with a serious real-world application: the new microscope with which the logo was made allows scientists…

Our research in the area of safety sciences aims to increase the mechanistic understanding of cellular toxicity of drugs and, in a broader sense, chemicals.

PhD defence

By detecting the tiny forces between a micrometer sized magnet and the spins of hydrogen nuclei, we can do MRI with a volume resolution that is approximately 12 orders of magnitude better than a conventional MRI.  

In this thesis, time-lapse fluorescent microscopy plays a pivotal role in investigating functional materials within living cells as well as the migratory behaviour of neural progenitor cells.

Three projects with Leiden researchers are to receive a subsidy from NWO for the construction or renovation of large-scale research facilities. They will be working on electron microscopy, an X-omics initiative and an X-ray telescope. The projects are part of the National Roadmap for Large-Scale Scientific…