Titel Deelnemers "Novel insights into evolution of protistan polyketide synthases through phylogenomic analysis" "Uwe John, Bánk Beszteri, Evelyne Derelle, Yves Van de Peer, Betsy Read, Hervé Moreau, Allan Cembella" "‘Reboot’ van de ordehandhaving bij protesten? Inzichten in technologiegestuurde praktijken van protestbeheer in de commandopost" "Jeroen Maesschalck" "Leuvens Instituut voor Criminologie" "Het gebruik van internetbronnen door betogers heeft verschillende implicaties voor de ordehandhaving, onder meer omdat dit tot snellere mobilisaties kan leiden en omdat dit zorgt voor meer niet-hiërarchische en onstabiele relaties in de betogende massa (Tarafdar & Ray, 2021). Als reactie op onder andere deze veranderingen, gebruikt de politie technologieën om haar ordehandhaving te ‘rebooten’: CCTV, body-worn cameras, drones, facial recognition technology, automatic number plate recognition en phone tracking. Criminologisch onderzoek focuste zich op het ontstaan van protesten of de risico’s van die technologieën (zoals risico’s voor privacy, discriminatie en bewegingsvrijheid). Tot nu toe werd echter nauwelijks onderzoek gedaan naar de manier waarop operatoren in de commandoposten (bv. politieleidinggevenden, dispatchers en overheidsfunctionarissen) protesten beheren en welke rol technologieën daarin spelen. Deze studie wil een antwoord bieden op die lacunes middels een empirisch onderzoek bestaande uit 35 gevalstudies van Belgische protesten. Die gevalstudies zullen geanalyseerd worden aan de hand van het crisisbeheermodel van Boin et al. (2016). Daarbij zal met name bestudeerd worden hoe operatoren in commandoposten ‘sense-making’, ‘decision-making’, ‘meaning-making’, ‘ending and accountability’ en ‘learning’ toepassen en welke rol technologieën spelen bij deze praktijken. De gevalstudies zullen een combinatie van interviews, observaties en documentenanalyse omvatten." "‘De Duivel schoptse voor haar kont. Hoezée, Hoezée, Hoezée!’ : het lied als agitator in Nederlandse twisten, rellen en protesten, 1780-1820" "Renée Vulto" "'Protesten tegen het Westen in Congo" "Kristof Titeca" "The curse of taxonomic uncertainty in biogeographical studies of free-living terrestrial protists: a case study of testate amoebae from Amsterdam Island" "T.J. Heger, E.A.D. Mitchell, Pieter Ledeganck, Bart Van de Vijver, Louis Beyens" "Aim A current debate in microbial biogeography contrasts two views concerning the distribution of free-living microorganisms. The first view assumes a ubiquitous distribution, while the second assumes that at least some species have limited geographical distributions. We tested for limited geographical distributions by identifying testate amoebae morphospecies from an extremely remote oceanic island where the potential for endemism is high. Location Amsterdam Island, Indian Ocean. Methods Sixty moss and water samples collected from the top of the volcano to the lowland were investigated for their testate amoeba content. Due to taxonomic uncertainties among the Argynnia (Nebela) dentistoma species complex (including A. antarctica), we also performed light and scanning electron microscopy investigations on the shell ultrastructure and biometric analyses on several specimens of this taxon. Results We identified a total of 43 testate amoeba taxa belonging to 15 genera. Only four testate amoeba taxa had previously been recorded on this island. Testate amoeba communities of Amsterdam Island are dominated by cosmopolitan ubiquitous euglyphid taxa such as Trinema lineare, Assulina muscorum and Corythion dubium. The length and width ranges for Argynnia dentistoma on Amsterdam Island overlap with other records of this species and of A. antarctica, suggesting that A. antarctica is not a distinct taxon. Main conclusions Although Amsterdam Island is among the most remote islands in the world, an extensive inventory of testate amoeba morphospecies provided no clear evidence for endemism. On the one hand, our detailed morphometric analysis of the A. dentistoma complex revealed that A. antarctica, a morphospecies previously suggested to display endemism, cannot be confidently distinguished from the cosmopolitan morphospecies A. dentistoma. On the other hand, five morphotaxa could not be identified with certainty and might represent new species, potentially with limited distribution. These examples illustrate how taxonomic uncertainties undermine biogeographical studies of testate amoebae. In order to allow better interpretation of morphology-based testate amoeba distribution data, an assessment of genetic diversity among and within morphotaxa in relation to geographical distance for some common testate amoebae should be given high priority." "Gene and genome evolution in chromalveolate protists" "Cindy Martens" "Ever since the early days of biological research, comparisons have played an important role in scientic discoveries. Nowadays, with the availability of complete genome sequences, many comparisons are being made at the whole genome level. Such analyses have led to the results presented in this PhD dissertation, entitled ""Gene and Genome Evolution in Chromalveolate Protists"". Chromalveolates are an important group of protist species that affect our ecosystem in enormous ways. They represent a large fraction of known eukaryotic diversity, ranging from tiny obligate intracellular parasites to free-living algae of more than 50 meters long. Some of these organisms can be very harmful by causing severe diseases in animals and plants, others are vital members of our ecosystem. In spite of the biological importance of the chromalveolates and protists in general, they have been the least studied eukaryotic group for a long time. However, they have gained much interest in the last few years, which has led to different genome projects of chromalveolate organisms. At present, 15 chromalveolate genomes have been sequenced and annotated, of which 14 are analyzed and discussed in this PhD dissertation. Using comparative approaches, we observed that chromalveolates show a tremendous difference in the number of genes they have lost or gained either through duplication or horizontal gene transfer. In general, it is clear that comparative genomics is a powerful discipline that becomes more and more informative as genomic sequence data accumulate. Thanks to the recent advances in sequencing technologies, it is reasonable to assume that even more chromalveolate genomes will be sequenced in the near future. This will provide us with a wealth of information that will help us to further address interesting biological questions related to these fascinating organisms." "Structural comparison of protiated, H/D-exchanged and deuterated human carbonic anhydrase IX" "Katarina Koruza, B. Lafumat, Maria Nyblom" "Human carbonic anhydrase IX (CA IX) expression is upregulated in hypoxic solid tumours, promoting cell survival and metastasis. This observation has made CA IX a target for the development of CA isoform-selective inhibitors. To enable structural studies of CA IX-inhibitor complexes using X-ray and neutron crystallography, a CA IX surface variant (CA IXSV; the catalytic domain with six surface amino-acid substitutions) has been developed that can be routinely crystallized. Here, the preparation of protiated (H/H), H/D-exchanged (H/D) and deuterated (D/D) CA IXSV for crystallographic studies and their structural comparison are described. Four CA IXSV X-ray crystal structures are compared: two H/H crystal forms, an H/D crystal form and a D/D crystal form. The overall active-site organization in each version is essentially the same, with only minor positional changes in active-site solvent, which may be owing to deuteration and/or resolution differences. Analysis of the crystal contacts and packing reveals different arrangements of CA IXSV compared with previous reports. To our knowledge, this is the first report comparing three different deuterium-labelled crystal structures of the same protein, marking an important step in validating the active-site structure of CA IXSV for neutron protein crystallography." "X-ray crystal structure of protiated (H) large monoclinic unit cell CA IX SV." "Katarina Koruza" "The curse of taxonomic uncertainty in biogeographical studies of free-living terrestrial protists : A case study of testate amoebae from Amsterdam Island" "T.J. Heger, E.A.D. Mitchell, Pieter Ledeganck, Sofie Vincke, Bart Van de Vijver, Louis Beyens" "Although Amsterdam Island is among the most remote islands in the world, an extensive inventory of testate amoeba rnorphospecies provided no clear evidence for endemism. On the one hand, our detailed morphometric analysis of the A. dentistoma complex revealed that A. antarctica, a morphospecies previously suggested to display endemism, cannot be confidently distinguished from the cosmopolitan morphospecies A. dentistomma. On the other hand, five morphotaxa could not be identified with certainty and might represent new species, potentially with limited distribution. These examples illustrate how taxonomic uncertainties undermine biogeographical studies of testate amoebae. In order to allow better interpretation of morphology based testate amoeba distribution data, an assessment of genetic diversity among and within morphotaxa in relation to geographical distance for some common testate amoebae should be given high priority" "Thuistaal op school: Uitbreiding van het vooronderzoek thuistalen van de allochtone kinderen en het uitvoeren van pretesten" "Kris Van den Branden" "Centrum voor Taal en Onderwijs, Leuven"