Reproduction of Plants
Sexual reproduction is one of the major characteristics of eukaryotes and involves a regular alternation between meiosis and fertilization. This course focuses on the basic principles of plant reproduction and the evolution of reproductive strategies in mosses, ferns, gymnosperms and angiosperms. This knowledge is used as basis to understand the concepts that underlie sexual reproduction
Life Sciences
De combinatie van de drie vakken in Q1 van BSc LST: Moleculaire Celbiologie, Life Sciences en Biochemie, geeft een complete introductie van de werking van de levensprocessen in de cel. Het klonen van DNA voor eiwit expressie en vervolgens zuiveren van een enzym, receptor, biomarker of ander eiwit zijn vaak de eerste stappen die nodig
Ecogenomics
The field of ecological genomics strives to uncover the genetic and molecular mechanisms influencing responses and adaptations of organisms to their environment. Achieving this aim requires insight in evolution and selection pressure and how that results in natural variation. Using this natural variation to study mechanisms requires a good understanding of both ecologically important phenotypes
Modelling and Problem Solving
The course covers major (combinatorial) solving approaches, namely constraint programming, integer programming, boolean satisfiability, dynamic programming and decision diagrams, and local search. The course focuses on modelling practical problems, expressing them in the surveyed paradigms; algorithms for solving such problems are covered in the follow-up “Constraint Solving” course. The topic of genetic algorithms is reserved
Sustainable food systems
Our current globalized food system is often at the core of the pressure on sustainable development goals such as life on land, life below water, and water and sanitation, while failing to meet goals such as zero hunger and no poverty. Understanding the causes of the current unsustainable situation and developing solutions to stimulate a
Master Level Computational Biology
During the course, the emphasis will be on composing and analysing exact computational models based on specific biological hypotheses. These models are used to gain insight into the dynamics of biological systems across various fields. Topics include multi-level evolution, such as pre-biotic evolution, eco-evolutionary dynamics, spatial pattern formation, and genome evolution—for instance, the interaction between
Plant Breeding and Biotechnology
This course provides knowledge on recent developments in plant breeding and future prospects in plant biotechnology. A thorough understanding of genetics, plant breeding and biotechnology tools including genetic modification and gene editing is linked to applications in various fields (crop improvement, biofortification, soil remediation and biofuel production). After a general introduction into a field, recent
Bioinformatics and Evolutionary Genomics
The sequencing revolution is rapidly charting ever more obscure branches in the tree of life. All these novel genomes and increasingly sophisticated bioinformatic methods are changing our view of where the complexity in our protein complexes come from and how the genes in the human genome came from. For example when we trace compare the
Algorithms in Bioinformatics
Modern biology routinely generates huge amounts of data: sequences, from NGS experiments; quantitative data, from -omics experiments; and graphs, representing molecular interactions. At the heart of many bioinformatics applications are algorithms that handle such types of data in time- and memory-efficient ways. Almost invariably these algorithms optimize some criterion – e.g. alignment quality, energy function
Data Analysis for Plant and Animal Breeding
Data analysis is central to both plant and animal breeding, and the size and complexity of phenotypic and genomic data sets continue to increase. Thus, the ability to analyze and interpret such large data sets is an essential skill for breeders, both in science and industry. In this course you will become familiar with state-of-the-art