Curriculum Vitae
Liesbeth Vissers graduated in cell biology at Leiden University in 2004, after following classes at Leiden and Twente University.
As an undergraduate student she studied the signal transduction pathway of Dictyostelium discoideum and Zebrafish with Ewa Snaar-Jagalska in the department of molecular cell biology at Leiden University. The aim of this study was to reveal the influence of chitin and hyaluronic acid on the MAPkinase activity in the mentioned species.
At this moment she works as a PhD student at the NIOO-KNAW Centre for Limnology in the Microbial Wetland Ecology group of Professor Riks Laanbroek. The focus of this PhD study will be the ecology and ecophysiology of Crenarchaea as a temperature proxy in European lakes with regard to climate change.
 
Projects
Ecology and Freshwater Crenarchaeota, their ecology and ecophysiology with regard to climate change
Understanding and predicting climate variability is a major scientific challenge, particularly with regard to climate-induced environmental change and its impact on human society. In cooperation with the University of Utrecht proxies will be developed for surface temperature of lakes based on fossilized crenarchaeotal membrane lipids, and the fossils of chironomids and the stable carbon and oxygen isotope composition of their chitin.
Since essentially nothing is known on the functioning of pelagic freshwater Crenarchaeota, the aim of this project is to learn more about ecology and ecophysiology, especially in relation to the TEX86 temperature proxy. For this purpose, different molecular tools (e.g., qPCR, FISH) will be developed to study the diversity and spatio-temporal distribution of current crenarchaeota.
Subsequently, attempts are being made to enrich and isolate these microbes for physiological studies. In this way the TEX86 proxy will be validated for non-temperature interfering mechanisms inside or outside the crenarchaeotal cell (e.g. seasonality, conductivity, competition, light) and the metabolism of crenarchaea that live in European lake water and sediment will be revealed.
Co-Operation
Dr. Gerard Muyzer, TU Delft
co-promoter
drs. Cornelia I. Blaga, Utrecht University
Partner in the temperature proxy project
drs. Frederike Verbruggen, Utrecht University
Partner in the temperature proxy project
Dr. Flavio Anselmetti
Partner in the temporal analyses of Vierwaldstaettersee
Selected Publications
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Title: A nested PCR approach for improved recovery of archaeal 16S rRNA gene fragments from freshwater samples
Author(s): Vissers EW, Bodelier PLE, Muyzer G, Laanbroek HJ
Source: FEMS MICROBIOLOGY LETTERS Volume: 298 Issue: 2 Pages: 193-198 Published: SEP 2009 |
Links
Darwin Center for Biogeology
http://www.darwincenter.nl/
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