Student testimonials 2011 of the Laboratory of Nematology

... immunomodulatory effects of mushroom compounds

As every living species, worms eat, can adapt to some physical conditions and they could even sneeze ...

... doing your thesis demands that you work more or less independent and show the ability to solve the real-time academic problems

during the weekly LMA literature or work discussions I gained a lot of theoretical knowledge and learnt how to interpret my results and draw conclusions

... I will study (as a start) the impact of invasive plants on the plant- and nematode community, for the latter group we used Q-PCR and DNA-barcode based monitoring

... I gained good practical knowledge, skills and competence in molecular work especially aspects of Molecular marker assisted selection which has been my major interest of learning

... I carried out an Arabidopsis screening on the role of defense genes

I can simply refer my time here as “working with joy”

I have chosen this research subject, because I wanted to see how theoretical, genetic knowledge is applied in experiments and to gain laboratory experience

I have done genotyping of parental and recombinant lines with SNPs markers as well as phenotyping of the same lines by heat treatment

I also obtained much practical experience in the lab, especially with using ELISA and cell cultures

... we were looking for interactors of the excretions of parasitic nematodes in dendritic cells and macrophages and what effect the excretions have on the immune cells

...one thing I learned for sure, 90% of research never makes it to a journal, but often you just have to try to discover that it doesn’t work

What impressed me most is people in this lab can work hard while still they can enjoy their life

... this whole NIOO-community itself interacts at even higher trophic levels, for instance with the Wageningen University and as a part of that, the laboratory of Nematology

My task was to evaluate the gene silencing, improve the ovalbumin purification protocol and to assess the characteristics of the plant produced protein.

I think I’ve never learned so much in such a short time

I exposed the worms to heat stress and thereafter I measured gene expression using microarrays

I then used the latest microarray technology to profile the transcriptome of these mutants to see what was happening on a genetic level