Gene Technology
Recombinant DNA technology has brought about a revolution in our understanding of molecular processes in living organisms. To date, there is no field in experimental biology that has remained untouched by the potential of isolating, analyzing and manipulating genes and organisms. Thus, gene technology provides essential tools in both fundamental and applied medical, industrial, agricultural,
Data Science for Plant Breeding and Genetics
One of the major goals for plant breeders is to identify candidate varieties that are well adapted to the set of environmental conditions that are relevant for the agricultural system of interest. To achieve this goal, breeders characterize their genotypes in multi-environment trials or in phenotyping platforms. The ranking of genotypes might change across trials,
Biology and Management of Plant Pests and Diseases
Plants can be challenged by very different biological entities, particularly viruses, nematodes, fungi, bacteria, and insects, resulting in significant crop losses on a global scale and thus endangering food security and safety. These entities differ very much in their biology and feeding and survival strategies. On plants, the disease phenotypes can both be very similar
Advanced Omics: from Single-Cell to Meta-Omics Approaches
Omics technologies have revolutionized our ways of looking at the relationship between genotype and phenotype of living organisms. Those technologies are nowadays widely applied to many organisms (bacteria, plants, animals, human). Yet for many years researchers have been looking only at average effects by analysing bulk samples. Recently, single-cell analyses have become available for many
Data Driven Discovery in the Life Sciences: Hypothesis Generation from Omics Data
Across the life sciences, scientists utilize omics data to study biological phenomena in humans, plants, animals and microbes. This results in large and heterogeneous data sets that can be analyzed using a variety of algorithms and statistical methods. Making sense of the data, extracting biological knowledge out of the results of these analyses and formulating
Markers in Quantitative Genetics and Plant Breeding (online)
In this course, the students will be made familiar with the use of molecular markers in genetic research and plant breeding, the estimation of genetic distance based on marker genotype frequencies in different types of segregating populations, the construction of linkage maps, concepts and applications of quantitative genetics, the analysis of quantitative trait loci (QTLs)
New Trends in Plant Breeding
This course aims at sparking interest in a wide array of topics, which can be useful for a career in plant breeding industry or in science. Subjects treated are at a higher integration level, not only taking into account plant breeding aspects, but regarding all aspects involved, such as environmental issues, products and chain issues,
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
Population and Quantitative Genetics
Life on earth shows immense variation, both in phenotypes and the underlying genotypes. Population and quantitative geneticists address questions such as where this variation comes from, how it is maintained, and how it can be used. This course introduces seminal models and concepts that deal with the dynamics of genetic variation, and applies these to
Genetic Analysis Trends and Concepts
This advanced course explains the most important genetic concepts to unravel and understand complex biological phenomena. We in detail explain the genetic processes underlying variation and its inheritance and their relevance with respect to evolution. We center our course around three main themes: Mutation, recombination and (epi-)genetic transmission. All three themes are both cause and