Veni grant for Bastiaan von Meijenfeldt to study ancient cellular membrane mystery
NIOZ-researcher Bastiaan von Meijenfeldt has been awarded a Veni grant for his research project to study an ancient cellular membrane mystery. With the grant of 320,000 euros, he aims to enlighten the evolution and origin of two membrane types in all living cells that have distinct main lipid components.
The Veni is a personal scientific grant aimed at promising researchers who have recently obtained their PhD, granted by Dutch research organisation NWO. The grant instrument allows recipients to conduct research of their own choosing. The topics vary greatly, from identifying the moments when children are most at risk of being taken into care within youth protection programmes, to improving the quality of surgery with video analysis or safeguarding biodiversity through law.
The lipid divide
Bastiaan von Meijenfeldt has been awarded the Veni for his project on an ancient cellular membrane mystery. “All living cells are surrounded by a membrane consisting of mostly lipids”, he explains. “We can distinguish two membrane types, each with distinct main lipid components. Why cells of different organisms incorporate one or the other lipid type, and how this ‘lipid divide’ came to be, is still unknown.”
Understanding early life as well as cellular membranes
To unravel this, von Meijenfeldt will study the proteins that are embedded in both membrane types. Using large-scale computational analyses he will investigate the constraints that the lipids exert on membrane proteins, so he can reconstruct the evolution of the lipid divide. The results of his project will be important for understanding early life, the rise of complex cells, and the detailed functioning of cellular membranes.
Von Meijenfeldt: “I like puzzles, and understanding the membrane is like assembling a super complex puzzle. With the Veni, I will be able to uncover how the pieces of the two different membrane types fit together, and explain an important feature of the history of life on Earth.”
About the Veni programme
The Veni grants are awarded annually by NWO. A total of 1,365 pre-proposals were submitted, and of these 469 full proposals were submitted. Exactly 200 proposals were granted with a Veni. These were divided between 66 in Science (ENW), 78 in Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH), 25 in Applied and Engineering Sciences (AES), and 31 grants at ZonMw (biomedical and medical research).