Virology

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Chair Group

Our research focuses on plant viruses, arboviruses and insect viruses. We aim to unravel the molecular and ecological mechanisms underlying virus-host and virus-vector interactions to understand how these determine pathology and transmission. The Chair group is led by Monique van Oers.

Research themes

Plant virus-host and -vector interactions
We study plant viruses i) as the causal agents of plant diseases, ii) as models for investigating fundamental biological questions (with the focus on plant virus biology and virus-vector-plant interactions), and iii) as tools for biotechnological applications.
Insect virus-host interactions
We study a number of insect viruses infecting wild and/or cultured insect populations. These virus infections may cause clear symptoms or stay hidden without being seen (covert infections) for a long time.
Arboviruses & biotechnology
We study the optimization of baculovirus vectors for vaccination and gene therapy purposes.

Education

Education by Virology

At the Chair Groups of Wageningen University, we are very passionate about teaching. Our teaching staff is involved in multiple courses on BSc and MSc level for different study programs.

Our courses include aspects of various sciences. In addition, we offer courses that focus on training academic skills, such as writing and debating skills.

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Develop skills

During a thesis with us, you can develop skills like insect and mammalian cell culturing, RNA interference, immunological techniques, RNA/DNA transfections and much more.

Publications & Projects

Our research projects span from virus discovery and the study of virus replication mechanisms to next-generation vaccines development. We publish the outcome of our projects in scientific journals, professional journals, scientific and popular books, and proceedings. You can find all publications and projects in Wageningen Library.

Highlighted projects

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Highlighted publications

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Chair Holder

Monique van Oers is specialised in insect viruses and coordinates the INSECT DOCTORS MCSA-2019-ITN programme, aimed at education of insect pathologists that can support the insect mass-rearing industry after their graduation. She also coordinates the NWO-TTW BACFREE project, aimed at improving the baculovirus expression system.