Carbon dioxide capture and utilization technologies are necessary to create a truly circular economy. The electrochemical reduction of carbon dioxide to formate is an appealing carbon utilization method as it can be performed at room temperature and pressure, it only requires two electrons, and it has…

Advanced mass spectrometry of glycosphingolipids takes the central stage in this thesis. Investigations focus on characterization of glycosphingolipid metabolism in health and disease with emphasis to the detection and accurate quantitation of known and so far unknown glycosphingolipids and closely…

The first steps are made in personalised cancer vaccination strategies, which aim to induce a more specific immune response with fewer side effects. The activation of cytotoxic T cells is crucial for an effective immune response.

In the current global context, there is a pressing need to address sustainable energy supplies to safeguard our Planet and its ecosystems. The choices made by human society have a significant impact on genetic evolution and climate.

Membrane fusion is a vital process in living organisms and is mediated by zipper-like proteins.

Human civilization consumes a huge amount of fossil fuels, which has resulted in an atmospheric CO2 level which has not been higher in over 800 millennia.

Promotor: M.T.M. Koper, Co-promotors: A.I. Yanson, L.B.F. Juurlink

It is a common technique in global optimization with expensive black-box functions to learn a surrogate-model of the response function from past evaluations and use it to decide on the location of future evaluations.

Green hydrogen is produced via a process called water electrolysis. During electrolysis water is split into oxygen and hydrogen.

Single-layer graphene (SLG) has attracted considerable interest as a proton exchange membrane for direct methanol fuel cells (DMFCs), owing to its atomic thickness, mechanical robustness, and unique proton permeability.

This dissertation presents the synthesis and evaluation of antibody recognition for various capsular polysaccharide (CP) fragments of Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus).

The overall theme of this thesis is to complement the electrochemical data acquired in fuel cell research with in situ X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and soft X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS).

Reducing greenhouse gas emissions is one of the most pressing challenges that humanity faces in the coming decades.

Kinase inhibitors are key therapeutic agents, particularly in oncology, yet their clinical efficacy is often hampered by off-target effects and limited understanding of their cellular target profiles.

This dissertation explores new chemical strategies for the synthesis of self-adjuvanting peptide conjugates and immunomodulatory ligands aimed at targeted activation of the immune system.

Promotor: G.A. van der Marel, Co-promotor: J.D.C. Codée

In this thesis, we study different curved single crystals because of the diversity of surface structures across their curvature.

This thesis advances our understanding of lipid uptake, a vital first step in lipid metabolism, by developing innovative click chemistry-based tools to study how immune cells internalize lipids.

Advanced UHF MRI techniques provide powerful tools for studying the zebrafish brain, an emerging model in neurological research. In this work, various MRI and localized MRS methods are optimized and employed for UHF strength for studying the zebrafish brain.

Understanding the formation and evolution of planetary systems is one of the most fundamental challenges in astronomy. To directly image and study young exoplanets and the circumstellar disks they form from, dedicated high-contrast imaging instruments are built.

The research aims to explore the evolutionary adaptability of enzymes and the impact of temperature on protein evolution pathways, using M. tuberculosis β-lactamase BlaC as the object of study. Enzymes inherently embody a delicate balance between activity and stability, and the acquisition of new enzymatic…

Understanding interactions in quantum many-body systems remains one of the most profound and difficult challenges in condensed matter physics.

β-Lactamases are enzymes that can break down β-lactam substrates, such as antibiotics, preventing the use of these antibiotics for the treatment of various infectious diseases. However, some compounds, β-lactamase inhibitors, can block these enzymes allowing for possible treatments using a combination…

To address the fundamental questions of how life on Earth emerged and how common life may be in the Universe, it is crucial to know the chemical composition of the planet-forming material.

Principles of Environmental Sciences provides a comprehensive picture of the principles, concepts and methods that are applicable to problems originating from the interaction between the living and non-living environment and mankind. Both the analysis of such problems and the way solutions to environmental…

The high velocity tail of the total velocity distribution of stars provides essential insight into fundamental properties of the Galaxy.

The role of the interfacial environment during electrochemical reactions has been increasingly valued, especially for those reactions involving protons or hydroxyl ions.

The research described in this thesis focused on the use of bioorthogonal antigens to investigate immunological processes in antigen presenting cells. Bioorthogonal antigens are antigenic proteins produced through recombinant expression in a methionine auxotrophic E. coli strain.

Nucleoid associated proteins maintain the architecture of the bacterial chromosome and regulate gene expression, hinting that their role as transcription factors may involve local three-dimensional chromosome re-modelling.

This thesis focuses on developing wafer-scale two-dimensional (2D) materials by combining synthesis, transfer, characterization, and device integration of graphene, hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN), and BN-doped amorphous carbon.

Climate change is one of the largest challenges faced by humanity. To combat this research into alternatives to fossil fuels is ongoing. Dihydrogen is considered a good alternative fuel, since its burning only forms water.

Due to their central physiological roles in living organisms, retaining beta-glycosidases have been the subject of tremendous research efforts to examine their structure/function relation using numerous biophysical and biochemical approaches.

With the energy transition toward a renewable energy supply and a CO2-neutral economy, electrification of the energy system is rising in importance, which leads to the challenge of long-term storage of renewable electricity.

Promotor: J.W.M. Frenken

Pseudomonas Aeruginosa is a Gram-negative bacterium which can form biofilms, increasing its resistance against antibiotics and the host immune system. Polysaccharides are an integral part of this biofilm, one of these polysaccharides is called Psl. PslG is a glycosidase, able to cleave this polysaccharide,…

This work describes several studies into the electroreduction of carbon dioxide (CO2RR), both regarding mechanistical aspects and catalyst stability considerations. Mechanistic insights into carbon-carbon bond formation on a silver catalyst are described in Ch 2, were we find an acetaldehyde-like surface…

Catalysis is of extreme relevance in the production of everyday materials and plays a central role in many aspects of our life.

Consequences for sediment stability and seston trapping

Hydrocarbonylation of alkenes with carboxylic acids in synthesis of carboxylic acid anhydrides is relatively less explored. We herein present a study and optimization of a palladium-catalyzed hydrocarbonylation reaction of alkenes using carboxylic acids as the nucleophile, by which acid anhydrides can…

The lysosomal β-glucosidase named glucocerebrosidase (GCase) is a retaining β-glucosidase that hydrolyzes the glycosphingolipid glucosylceramide (GlcCer) to ceramide and glucose at acid pH.

Promotor: J.N. Kok, Co-Promotor: A.J. Knobbe

The lipid membrane is a basic structural component of all living cells. Embedded in this nanometer-thin barrier, membrane proteins shape the membrane and at the same time respond to the shape of the membrane.

Despite the history of studies on methanol formation from CO2, the dominant elementary reaction steps that constitute the chemical mechanism for this catalyzed process are not determined.

The spindle-assembly checkpoint (SAC) is a safety mechanism which secures accurate chromosome segregation during mitosis.

Supramolecular polymers are class of materials that are formed by non-covalent interactions such as hydrogen bonding, π-π interactions, electrostatic interactions and the hydrophobic effect.

Biopolymer sequencing with graphene edge-based tunnel junctions has the potential to overcome current limitations with the third generation of sequencing based on biological nanopores.

Synthesis and application of chemical biology tools to study immunomodulatory signaling lipids.

Phosphorylation affects all four major biomolecules – proteins, lipids, carbohydrates and nucleic acids – and plays a pivotal role in the most fundamental cellular functions.

Real-life processes are characterized by dynamics involving time. Examples are walking, sleeping, disease progress in medical treatment, and events in a workflow.

Glycosidases are essential in fundamental biological processes and are responsible for the degradation of most (oligo)saccharides, glycolipids and glycoproteins.