Willem de Vos
Willem de Vos (born October 30, 1954 in Apeldoorn ) is a Dutch microbiologist and professor at Wageningen University .
De Vos studied biology and biochemistry at the University of Groningen with a degree in 1978 and received his doctorate in 1983, doing some research at the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics in Berlin. As a post-doctoral student he was in England and then headed a research group at the Netherlands Institute for Dairy Product Research (now NIZO Food Research). In 1987 he became head of research and at the same time part-time professor in Wageningen with a full professorship from 1994. Since 2007 he has also been part-time professor at the University of Helsinki .
He examines bacteria in the human intestinal flora and was one of the first to use DNA analyzes to prove the existence of an individual, partly genetically determined, intestinal flora. He is particularly looking for those bacterial strains that have a positive influence on health and sees this as a therapeutic approach. For example, he was able to show in a study that in overweight people with problems with sugar metabolism, the injection of intestinal flora of normal, lean subjects led to a normalization of the sugar metabolism.
He discovered that lactic acid bacteria can communicate with each other using special peptides and thus regulate the growth of other bacterial strains. He developed methods to manipulate the metabolism of lactic acid bacteria with application to the improvement of the production of cheese, sweeteners, vitamins and odorous substances.
In 2008 he received the Spinoza Prize . Since 2009 he has been an academy professor at KNAW.
Fonts
- with CA Kolmeder: Gut microbiota: small organisms - big impact, in: Manfred Schartl, Julia Maria Erber-Schropp (ed.), Opportunities and Risks of Modern Biotechnology, Springer 2014, 53–68
- with Bogert, B. van den, Leimena, MM, Zoetendal, EG, Kleerebezem, M: Functional Intestinal Metagenomics. In: FJ de Bruijn: Handbook of Molecular Microbial Ecology II: Metagenomics in Different Habitats, Wiley-Blackwell 2011, Chapter 18
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Jörg Blech: The expulsion of the colonists . In: Der Spiegel . No. 38 , 2012, p. 128-130 ( online ).
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Vos, Willem de |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Dutch microbiologist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | October 30, 1954 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Apeldoorn |