Seven new research projects awarded grants from the Academy Institutes Research Fund

Fungi have provided us with important bioactive compounds such as antibiotics and immunosuppressive and cholesterol-lowering drugs. They remain a unique source of useful molecules, and yet they have not been adequately researched.

In an earlier research project, the Hubrecht Institute and the Westerdijk Institute joined forces to identify new bioactive fungi-derived molecules with therapeutic potential. Using bioassays and synthetic biology strategies, they identified three compounds showing interesting bioactivity.

The current research project represents the next step in these efforts. The researchers involved will identify the genes that control the biosynthesis of these three compounds. They will also transfer the compounds to a fungal cell factory for their sustainable and controlled production. This project paves the way for the discovery, characterisation and sustainable production of bioactive compounds with therapeutic potential.

One of the biggest challenges for the International Institute of Social History (IISH) and other institutes that manage recent archival material is to offer fast and secure access to digital-born material. The usual methods used for the selection, categorisation, inventory and long-term storage of paper-based archival material become time-consuming and labour-intensive when used for digital material. This is because digital material is not only highly heterogeneous, but also delivered in very different forms (text, image, audio, video) and in a variety of file formats. Digital material is also more complex in terms of context and structure, and the number of files involved can be substantial. It is also not clear in advance how users wish to consume digital material and how it can best be offered to them.

In this research project, IISH aims to create a ‘bypass’: an infrastructure and work procedures that make digital-born archival material available for research immediately after its receipt.

Data Archiving and Networked Services (DANS) and the Netherlands Institute of Ecology (NIOO) are joining forces in a new pilot project that will prepare existing ecological data for advanced data use. NIOO’s many decades of avian and general ecological research have yielded important datasets on the biota of the Veluwe region in the Dutch province of Gelderland. These datasets are available digitally, but they do not comply with FAIR standards (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Re-usable). NIOO needs work procedures that will make these datasets FAIR and prepare them for advanced analyses. This challenge corresponds with one of the major issues that DANS, as a research data repository, is facing: how to make data ready for reuse and practical interoperability.

It remains unclear how the datasets can be used for advanced analysis and modelling purposes, for example artificial intelligence and digital twin simulations of physical reality. This research project will allow the two institutes to investigate and test how to make quantitative ecological data FAIR and suitable for analysis and modelling of this kind.

Computational propaganda – the coordinated dissemination of political disinformation on social media by networks of hired influencers (‘cyber troops’) – poses a significant and growing threat to the quality of public debate and thus democracy worldwide. This joint research project, involving the Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies (KITLV), the Meertens Institute and the International Institute of Social History (IISH), is a comparative study of how social media-based manipulation of public opinion is organised in Thailand, the Philippines and Indonesia. It also examines the reasons for the differences between these countries and how those differences play out. To do this, this project is building an interdisciplinary research partnership that will take a new, innovative multi-methods approach.

Over the past few decades, fluorescent markers in rodent brains have become an essential tool for understanding how cognitive functions are related to neural circuits in the brain.

This research project will allow the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience and the Dutch neuroscience community to generate and share high-resolution (cellular and sub-cellular) histological data from rodents, thus maximising data re-use.

Sharing such data has three major advantages: (1) it reduces the number of animals used for research purposes, (2) it speeds up advancements in research because other research teams do not need to repeat an experiment to extract a specific piece of data for a slightly different research question, and (3) it maximises the impact of the original research.

In this research project, the Netherlands Institute of Ecology (NIOO), the Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute (NIDI) and the Meertens Institute will set up a transdisciplinary study to determine how land and water use practices and biodiversity interact and influence the landscape, water quality and society.

Water plays a pivotal role in the Dutch landscape and water levels are strictly regulated. Current water management regimes are inconsistent with sustainable and nature-inclusive land use because biodiversity and natural wetlands require flooding and fluctuating water levels. Another issue is that fertiliser and pesticide use is excessive, despite regulation, and is leading to a loss of biodiversity and adverse impacts on human health. Combined with urban waste water, these factors are resulting in a serious deterioration in water quality.

This project will use fundamental research methods to assess the complex interaction between climate change, public response and the impacts on water quality and biodiversity, the aim being to develop scenarios for climate-robust landscapes.

Fungi and bacteria influence soil functionality, such as its ability to maintain structure and capacity for carbon sequestration and water retention. These properties are important in connection with several major challenges facing Dutch soils, such as low soil moisture (due to climate change) and pollution (e.g. high concentrations of azoles and nitrogen).

In this research project, the Westerdijk Institute and the Netherlands Institute of Ecology (NIOO) aim to develop synthetic soil microbial communities to deliver the desired soil functionality. The research programme is new and interdisciplinary in nature, linking mycology, bacteriology genomics, ecology and soil health. It takes a completely new approach to studying the adaptation of soil to climate change and pollution.