-

-

Copper salts are commonly used in (organic) agriculture to combat bacterial and fungal pests, but accumulate in soil and have detrimental effects on crops and soil. In this project sustainable pesticides including microgel delivery technology for their application will be developed and tested in the field. Their effectiveness to protect against plant disease and their impact on the soil will be evaluated. The work will be carried out by a consortium of Dutch and Brazilian scientists together with agronomic companies and a research institute dedicated to citrus fruit cultivation. The end product should be a more sustainable agriculture practice.

In 2015 we detected, for the first time, a gravitational wave from the coalescence of two black holes in a faraway galaxy. More and better measurements will provide exciting new input to fundamental questions about black holes, neutron stars, the structure of our universe and its history back to the Big Bang. We are experts in the technology required for this new type of astronomy. With this proposal we will contribute high-tech instrumentation to upgrade the Virgo observatory. The new observatory will deliver ten times more detections per year than previously.

In nature, we can find many biological materials with outstanding properties that are difficult to recreate by chemical synthesis. A particularly interesting family of materials was discovered recently in the ring teeth found on squid tentacles: suckerins. Suckerins are proteins with an unusual and highly desirable range of material properties for medical and industrial applications. For example, suckerin-12 has wet adhesion properties, and could be used as surgical glue and scaffold for growing human cells. Suckerin-19 shows thermoplastic behaviour and can be processed by melting, which is highly unusual for biological materials. However, suckerins currently cannot be sourced or produced in sufficient quantities to realize their potential. This project explores a new approach for the production of suckerins: plant-based protein production. Plants are excellent systems for the production of complicated proteins from other organisms and can produce high protein quantities within a week. Here, two suckerin variants with different material properties and potential applications will be produced in Australian tobacco and tobacco suspension cells. The suckerin production will be optimized by engineering the plant metabolism to better meet the amino acid requirements of each protein. A statistical Design of Experiment approach will support the selection of the best production conditions. The goal of this project is to develop an efficient plant-based production process for suckerin-12 and suckerin-19 to facilitate more studies of their material properties, and eventually their use as biobased materials.