Bioinformatics

Predicting enzyme specificity using machine learning

Janani Durairaj, PhD student in our group, published a paper in PLoS Computational Biology, integrating coevolution and structure-based machine learning to predict predict precursor cation specificity in plant sesquiterpene synthases.

Machine learning is hot

Machine learning is a hot topic in the plant sciences. Read a review by our own experts Aalt-Jan van Dijk en Dick de Ridder.

Veni Grant

With his research on a computer-aided drug discovery platform that designs and explores modular peptide synthetases, dr. Mohammad Alanjary has been awarded with a Veni Grant.

ERC Starting Grant

Marnix Medema was awarded an ERC Starting Grant for his project 'DECIPHER', which will focus on interpreting the chemical language of the microbiome.

Events

Upcoming PhD defenses

After years of hard work, Satria, Rens and Victoria all have their PhD theses coming up. They will be defending on May 25th, June 14th and September 13th, respectively.

New postdocs

On March 1st, Zachary Reitz started as a postdoc in our group. They will work on gene-expression-based function prediction of biosynthetic gene clusters in microbiomes. On May 1st, Kumar Singh started as postdoc. He will work integrative omics analysis to identify plant biosynthetic pathways involved in recruitment of microbiota.

PhD defence Hernando

On February 8th, 16.00, Hernando Suarez Duran, defended his PhD thesis, entitled "Multi-omics approaches for biosynthetic pathway prediction in plants".

PhD defence Siavash Sheikhizadeh

On November 12th, Siavash Sheikhizadeh Anari successfully defended his PhD thesis, 'Towards comparative pan-genomics'. His thesis is the result of a fruitful collaboration between Biosystematics and Bioinformatics. Congratulations, Siavash!

New PhD student(s)

On December 1st, 2020, Hannah Augustijn started her PhD project on a collaborative project between the Medema group and the Van Wezel lab in Leiden. Welcome, Hannah!