Chemistry, structural insight and applications of β-sheet forming
lipopeptides
Cavalli, S.
Citation
Cavalli, S. (2007, January 25). Chemistry, structural insight and applications of β-sheet forming lipopeptides. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/1887/9452
Version: Corrected Publisher’s Version
License: Licence agreement concerning inclusion of doctoral thesis in the Institutional Repository of the University of Leiden
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Acknowledgments
161
Acknowledgments
To finish with, I would like to acknowledge all the people that directly or indirectly have contributed to the results presented in this thesis.
Fist of all I would like to mention Emily Tellers, who mainly contributed as a high motivated and bright student to the successful realization of the majority of the work described in Chapters 2 and 3. Many thanks also to Mark Bleijenberg and Frank Versluis who both helped in the studies of the self-assembly properties of the amphiphilic peptides.
I am grateful to all my colleagues from the Soft Matter Chemistry Group. Special thanks go to Jan-Willem Handgraaf for the MD simulations and the realization of the 3D structures presented in this thesis (cover and Chapter 1). Wim Jesse is acknowledged for his general technical assistance and Rene Tipton for the practical contribution to the work described in Chapter 5. Many thanks to Hana Robson Marsden for the useful discussions and style revisions of parts of this thesis. Thanks also to all the neighbouring groups at the third floor (Colloids and Interface Science Group and Astrobiology Group, bedankt voor de leuke tijd met lunch of koffie en taart. Especially during the football world cup 2006!). In particular I am grateful to Zan Peeters for his help regarding the images in Chapter 1. A special mention must go to Zita Martins for her great support in and outside the lab (Zita obrigada for letting me use your precious HPLC, for your support and for all the fun and good time we had together).
I am thankful to all the people who have worked or are still working in the group of prof. dr. Hermen Overkleef and prof. dr. Gijs van der Marel (Biosyn group, Leiden University, The Netherlands) for the fruitful collaboration and the good time throughout my long stay at Leiden University. It has been a pleasure to know and work with all of you. In particular I would like to mention Hans van den Elst and Nico Meeuwenoord for their technical assistance. A special memory to prof. dr. Jacques van Boom.
I especially appreciated the collaboration with dr. Dmitri Filippov, Jimmy Weterings (Biosyn group, Leiden University, The Netherlands) and dr. Selina Khan (Department of Immunohematology and Bloodtransfusion, Leiden University Medical Center, The Netherlands), which led to the results described in Section 4 of Chapter 5. Many thanks to dr. Gijsbert Grotenbreg (Biosyn group, Leiden University, The Netherlands) for providing the Gramicidin S derivative for the work described in Chapter 6.
Acknowledgments
162
Prof. dr. Henk Busscher and co-workers (Department of Biomedical Engineering, University Medical Center Groningen and University of Groningen, The Netherlands) are acknowledged for the XPS and contact angle measurements.
I owe much to dr. Nico Sommerdijk and dr. Daniela Popescu (Laboratory of Macromolecular and Organic Chemistry, Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands). This successful collaboration brought to the results described in Chapter 3 (Daniela, I really appreciate to work and learn from you during the mineralization experiment, we were a great team).
I really enjoyed working with dr. Hanna Rapaport and all the people in her group (Department of Biotechnology Engineering, Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva, Israel). I will always keep a great memory of the wonderful professional and human experience I had during my visit to Israel and at the GIXD sessions in Hamburg (Toda!). Special thanks to dr. Silvina Federman for AFM measurements and prof. dr. K. Kjaer (Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, Denmark) for the GIXD beam time at Hasylab (beam-line BW1, DESY, Hamburg). I am especially grateful to Hila Isenberg and Eran Leshem for their precious help and for all the fun during the long working nights measuring the GIXD data (Hila, Eran “achtung baby”).
Fons Lefeber and Kees Erkelens are acknowledged for the NMR measurements.
Thanks to all the people that I have met at the university, ballet school or other places around in Leiden for making my daily life here joyful. Hugo Simões is especially acknowledged for the inlet of this thesis, which was also published in 2006 as the cover of Angewandte Chemie Int. Ed. (Hugo, muito obrigada! You are a fantastic graphic designer and a good friend).
Thanks to all my friends in Italy for being always there. I am especially thankful to Francesca for her pure and never ending friendship that binds us since our adolescence (Francy, brindisi all’amicizia e a “le spleen de Paris”!).
Last, but not least, I would like to thank my parents and my brother for constantly standing by me regardless of the distance and for their priceless love (Papà, mamma, grazie per avermi tramandato quella voglia di esplorare, di conoscere sempre cose nuove e soprattutto di non rinunciare mai a ciò che veramente vale. Marietto ti voglio un mare di bene).
