Four writer of excellent MSc theses won the Thesis Award 2022 from the University Fund Wageningen . Dana Verhoeven gain in the theater of aliveness sciences with her dissertation on sluttish - capturing mechanisms during photosynthesis in industrial plant leaves . She write her findings in an academic diary and even broke through an accepted dogma in works physiology . For the plant physiologists among us : she demonstrate that contrary to old feeling , the membrane in which these photosystems reside undergoes no structural change during such a state conversion . Her outstanding research and donnish achievements led her to be crowned as the overall winner . Lisa Boterman , Max van Deursen , and Aimee Kok pen the best theses within the domains of environmental sciences , societal skill , and agrotechnology and food science .
For her master ’s dissertation , Dana Verhoeven ( MSc Molecular Life Sciences ) aimed to better empathize the mechanics behind photosynthesis , a summons in which plant grow the energy of the sun into sugars that nurture the plant . interpret these mechanisms can help improve the photosynthetic efficiency of crop so as to increase yield and adjoin the challenge of feeding the endlessly growing humanity population .
An exceptional achievementDana wrote her dissertation in the data formatting of a scientific issue . In February this twelvemonth , the issue , with Dana as the first author , appeared in Plant Physiology , an acclaimed equal - reviewed journal in the field of Plant Sciences . This is an exceptional accomplishment , according to the jury : " It demonstrates that your research is wide apprise in the field and that you had a cardinal persona in this accomplishment . " Dana was also laud for her excellent observational skills and ebullience . She will proceed to work together with her thesis supervisory program Emilie Wientjes as a PhD researcher .
separate idle energyTo perform photosynthesis , plants have chloroplasts , singular organelles that capture sunlight via their weak - harvesting systems , so - call photosystems . But the light conditions change as the sun move across the horizon , the weather changes , or the surroundings change . One way for plant to deal with the changing light condition is to distribute the trance sun over two different photosystems in such a way that the carrying into action of both is balanced . This is called ' body politic transition . '
Dana developed a method that can quantify the state conversion in intact leaves ( " in folio " ) at a very high resolution . To do so , she used Fluorescence Lifetime Imaging , a microscopic method in which you look at how truehearted easy emissions reduction in a fluorescent substance call fluorophore . With this method , you may show what befall inside the cell and even at the level of a individual chloroplast . With her research , Dana has supplied a better reason of how light muscularity is split between both photosystems and how the light - harvesting content changes at the molecular tier .
Source : wur.nl
