News
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PhD defense: Saskia becomes dr. De ManToday Saskia defended her PhD thesis in De Agnietenkapel, which was filled to the brim with family, friends and (former) colleagues. This was also the first time that Renée acted in the formal capacity of promotor and used her ius promovendi to officially award Saskia the title of doctor. |
13 March, 2023 |
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EMBO course Techniques for Mammary Gland ResearchTogether with Maria Vivanco (Spain) and Martin Jechlinger (Germany) Renée organised an EMBO practical course at the EMBL campus in Heidelberg. This was the 4th time this course was organised, but the first time that Renée was involved. |
10 March, 2023 |
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Why outreach should count towards valorisation and impactIn the fall, Renée gave a lecture for high school teachers (organised by BetaPartners). Today we learned that one of the teachers was inspired to use the topic of genome editing and the information provided in the lecture to generate new learning materials and assignments for their high school students! |
10 March, 2023 |
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New PhD thesisThe third PhD thesis of the lab has rolled off the press and it looks beautiful. Saskia will defend this impressive body of work on 13 March.
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16 February, 2023 |
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Celebrate good timesScience is full of failure (cloning, grant applications, you name it). Therefore, it is even more important to celebrate the highlights! And luckily we had some happy events too: Anna started - as did most of our students - Tanne’s review article got officially accepted, Renée was co-author on a paper about flying squirrels (it is about WNT5A, really) that was accepted in Science Advances (collaboration with Ricardo Mallino at Princeton), so plenty of reason to have cake, stroopwafels and other cookies (responsibly spread out over multiple weeks).
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6 February, 2023 |
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Welcome students, welcome Anna!Today, Anna started as a technician on the NWO-XL project. We are in the process of recruiting a PhD student, but Anna will help to get things up and running by cloning and generating new reporter alleles and setting up the 3D gastruloid cultures. |
1 February, 2023 |
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Nothing to see here...
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27 January, 2023 |
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The fifth ENBDC Think TankOriginally scheduled for December 2020, we finally succeeded in gathering (part of) the ENBDC organising committee in Amsterdam for our annual Think Tank. This fifth addition was co-organized by Renée and Jos Jonkers and was made possible by financial and in kind contributions from the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands Cancer Institute and Stem Cell Technologies. |
8 December, 2022 |
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Talk for high school teachersPreviously postponed (courtesy of the pandemic), Renée gave a talk for the Stichting Betapartners about basic breast cancer research and CRISPR/Cas genome editing. In the audience were biology (and other science) teachers for HAVO and VWO, TOAs and people from the LIO trajectory (leraar in opleiding, teacher in training). |
24 November, 2022 |
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Marleen and Tanne attend the 2022 Wnt meeting in JapanMarleen and Tanne returned from the 2022 Wnt meeting in Japan, where they both presented posters (and gave a flash talk). Luckily, they also had the opportunity for some sightseeing prior to the start of the conference to fully emerge themselves in Japanese culture. |
23 November, 2022 |
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The lab turns 9Today marks the official 9 year anniversary of the Wntlab, counting from when Renée started her tenure track at the University of Amsterdam. On to our second lustrum! |
1 November, 2022 |
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Update from the midst of the busiest teaching season: team work for the winThere is never a good time to get sick, but the busiest teaching season definitely is not the time - and COVID brain fog and fatigue are definitely real! |
28 October, 2022 |
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Dutch chromatin meeting 2022Marleen and Renée attended the 19th Dutch chromatin meeting in Leiden, where Marleen also presented a poster on our successful efforts to dissect the tissue-specific regulation of Wnt4 gene expression in the mammary gland. |
27 October, 2022 |
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NWO wetenschapscommunicatieRenée attended the NWO national science communication day in Den Haag (The Hague). While the plenary sessions (including a presentation by image sleuth and scientific integrity consultant Elisabeth Bik) and the breakout rooms were informative (including a working session on the newly formed/forming national center for science communication spearheaded by Alex Verkade and Ionica Smeets), the event was slightly overshadowed by the fact that Renée probably caught COVID there. We are all about cell to cell communication, but this is not what we had in mind. |
10 October, 2022 |
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Knowledge videos / OnderwijsvernieuwingAfter wrapping up our Frontiers in Medical Biology wetlab practicals with the entire lab, Renée spent the remainder of the afternoon recording two "kennisclips" with Vincent Blum and Edwin van Lacum .
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7 October, 2022 |
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Weekend van de Wetenschap: De MelkfabriekWhile the lab certainly does not have a shortage of outreach activities, this year we took part in the Science Park Open Day during the Weekend van de Wetenschap (Dutch National Weekend of Science) for the first time. |
1 October, 2022 |
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Coming up: Weekend van de Wetenschap and Poëzie onder de MicroscoopThere are multiple opportunities for the general public to come meet us in October, so come and join us at one of the following events and ask us everything you have always wanted to ask a biologist (we may have partial answers to some of your questions). |
21 September, 2022 |
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Lab trip to Fabrique des LumieresIn the last quiet week of summer, before the students are back on campus and the teaching starts, we went to the Westergasfabriek to visit the Klimt/Hundertwasser exhibit by Fabrique des Lumieres. |
1 September, 2022 |
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Goodbye studentsSpring passed quickly and updating the website did not get priority. |
31 August, 2022 |
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NWO XL grant awardedThis year saw multiple grant applications and just as many rejections. Despite what Renée told everyone, it turned out she was not yet dulled and the blows still hurt. |
30 July, 2022 |
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Summertime journal clubSummer has arrived and the teaching semester is almost over. Time to switch gears and have journal club the way it must have been intended: outside, on a terras, with coffee/tea and apple pie. |
6 July, 2022 |
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Lab BBQWith the first students approaching the end of their internship, Tanne again hosted our annual lab BBQ. Good times were had by all. |
7 June, 2022 |