Projects
Ethylene signal transduction during climacteric tomato fruit ripening KU Leuven
Tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L.) is a crop of high economic and nutritional value produced worldwide. Besides having a high number of vitamins and minerals, tomato fruit is rich in other bioactive components including carotenoids and phenolic compounds. In addition, it is an ideal model system to study fleshy fruit development and ripening thanks to its relative short life cycle, its small genome size and the availability of a large ...
Valorisation of industrial bio-based side streams with designer cellulosomics Ghent University
Cost-effective fermentation of fuels and chemicals from second generation sugars has a huge potential for replacing fossil-based feedstocks. Enzymatic saccharification of lignocellulosic biomass streams with (hemi)cellulases is essential to produce monomeric sugars for the production of fuel and chemicals. Yet, saccharification of heterogeneous lignocellulosic streams from circular use of biomass or the biorefinery of crops remains a too high ...
The role of GPCRs in metabolism and physiology of the pea aphid, Acyrthosiphon pisum. KU Leuven
Insects comprise 80% of the world’s animal species representing the largest and most diverse life form on the planet. Over evolutionary time, insects occupied and adapted to widely divergent habitats, resulting in a rich variation of body plans with different shapes, sizes, and specialized feeding mechanisms. They thus represent a unique opportunity to gain insight in the mechanisms that control feeding and metabolism and how they change ...
Plant-pollinator interactions and seed yield in Red Clover (Trifolium pratense L.) Research Institute for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food
How can we breed new red clover (Trifolium pratense L.) cultivars with a better seed yield? In the POLLINZO project ILVO intends to gain insight into the underlying genetic mechanisms regulating seed production, and the plant’s interactions with its natural pollinators. These insights can assist red clover breeders to develop new varieties with high seed yields. Questions of interest are: which ...
Cross-border exchange and application of research innovations aiming to increase nitrogen efficiency in dairy nutrition and profitability of dairy farms. Research Institute for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food
The aim of this INTERREG project is to improve the profitability on dairy farms through extensive knowledge exchange over the French-Belgian border. The project is focused on increasing nitrogen efficiency. France and Belgium use different feed evaluation systems, both of which are also changing over time. The different systems result hinder the comparison of feedstuff evaluation on one side and ...
PROTECOW - Cross-border exchange and application of research innovations aiming to increase nitrogen efficiency in dairy nutrition and profitability of dairy farms Inagro vzw
Process-induced structural changes in proteins of quinoa and the impact thereof on their functionalities KU Leuven
The pseudo-cereal quinoa (Chenopodium quinoa Willd.) has been cultivated for thousands of years in the Andean region. Over the past decade, it has gained interest in Western countries as nutritious gluten-free alternative for wheat in cereal-based food products. Furthermore, its protein has a well-balanced amino acid composition and is an excellent plant-based alternative for animal proteins rich in albumins and globulins.
The ...
Unraveling the regulation of serine biosynthesis in breast cancer cells. KU Leuven
Breast cancer is the most frequent type of tumor among women worldwide, accounting for 24.2% of all the tumor cases. Due to these tremendous incidences, breast cancer is also the type of tumor causing the highest number of deaths, indeed around 600.000 women die every year because of this disease. By taking a closer look at the prognosis of patients diagnosed with breast cancer, it appears evident that the progression of the disease towards a ...
Viral capture to identify susceptibility genes (VICIS) in Brachypodium distachyon, barley and wheat KU Leuven
As a result of the global corona pandemic, everyone has experienced the immediate impact of a viral epidemic on human health. However, it is often underestimated that similar repercussions can arise when crops instead of humans become hosts to pathogens. Up to 40% of global yield losses are attributed to pathogen-induced diseases, resulting in an annual economic cost exceeding US$220 billion. With the world’s population rapidly ...