University of Groningen
The diversity of glycogen branching enzymes in microbes
Zhang, Xuewen
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Publication date: 2019
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Zhang, X. (2019). The diversity of glycogen branching enzymes in microbes. University of Groningen.
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Acknowledgements
At the moment of completing this thesis, it is the time to look back the life in Groningen, the Netherlands. I have enjoyed so many beautiful sceneries in this country, really impressed by tulips lands, windmills and picturesque islands. Most importantly, I met so many friendly people who made my life so joyful and encouraged me to overcome all the challenges in my PhD pursuit. I appreciate all the help they provided to me and would like to say “thanks” to all of them. First and foremost, I would like to express the deepest gratitude to my promotor, Prof. Marc van der Maarel. Thanks for providing me the opportunity to work in the Aquatic Biotechnology and Bioproduct Engineering (ABBE) group. I will never forget that he encouraged me to talk with him in English when I was in China. I am deeply impressed by his intelligence, enthusiasm and kindness. I am truly grateful for his kind guidance and support during my PhD study. He is al-ways willing to help me and encourage me. I am greatly impressed by his critical attitude for research, and I learned and improved a lot not only in the academic knowledge but also the attitude towards science, which will be great fortune in my future career. I appreciate all the time and effort he devoted to revising the manuscripts, as well as the valuable discussions and suggestions. I would like to express my deepest gratitude to him, and I will treasure all that I learned. I would like to give my appreciation and thanks my daily supervisor Dr. Hans Leemhuis. He is really friendly and helpful to me. Thank him for all the help with the data analysis and revising the manuscripts. I enjoy all the discussions with him. He always gave me the helpful suggestions. I would like to thank my second promotor Prof. Gert-Jan Euverink. He gave me many useful commons and suggestion in this thesis.
I would like to thank the members of the reading committee Prof. A. Blenow, Prof. G. J. Poelarends and Prof. M. W. Fraaije, who devoted their valuable time to reading through my thesis and providing comments on the thesis, and approved the thesis for public defence.
My grateful thanks go to Prof. Stefen Janecek. His valuable contribution on in-formatics analysis of GH57 branching enzymes is highly appreciated. His sug-gestions on the manuscript helped me a lot. I would also like to thank Dr. Tjaard
Pijning for the manuscript correction and beautiful protein structure figures. Many thanks to Alle van Wijk, for helping me whenever I needed. Thanks for your patient to listen to me when I went into your office to discuss my thoughts and problems, and giving me your advice. I really enjoy all the conversations with you.
More special thanks to Marta and Adel, for your kindness and generosity, for teaching me the sample measurement and for all the fruitful work discussions in the lab.
I would like to thank Dr. Xiangfeng Meng and Dr. Yuxiang Bai, for nice discus-sions when I have problems on my research. My thanks go to Albert Woortman for his essential assistance with SEC measurements. Thank Dr. Sander van Leeu-wen for helping me in NMR and Dionex measurement.
My thanks go to all the former, present and temporary colleagues in the ABBE and PPBBE groups, for creating such a friendly atmosphere inside and outside the lab: Edita, Marta, Martin, Bert, Fean, Adel, Sofi, Lucie, Selva, Bob, Spiros, Janneke, Gang, Yu, Jing, Yanfei, Taojun, Lena, Ilmi, Ima, Felix, Theresa, Vivi, Thomas, Lisa, Leo, Manuel, Robert-Jan, Yoran, Steven, Hulisi, Maarten, Daan …
Grateful thanks go to our secretaries Inge and Johanna for their kind help. I should give my appreciations to Chinese Scholarship Council (CSC), who funder me to study in the Netherlands. I also appreciate the efforts of the Educa-tion SecEduca-tion of Chinese Embassy in the Netherlands. I would like to thank Prof. Tao Liu, Dr. Yibin Zhuang, Dr. Hua Yin and Dr. Huiping Bi at Tianjin Institute of Industrial Biotechnology, Chinese Academic Sciences for their help during my master study.
I am grateful to all my Chinese friends and Colleagues: Xiangfeng Meng, Yux-iang Bai, Yanping Geng, Chengyong Xiao, Chenglong Deng, Yi Yu, Miaozhen Huang, Keni Yang, Ning Ding, Huifang Yin, Qian Li, Haojie Cao, Yanglei Yi, Boqun Liu, Huatang Cao, Qinglong Meng, Yanfei Zhang… Thank them for all the time we had together. I wish all of them good luck in their life.
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Acknowledgements
To my wife Min Wu, I cannot thank her enough for supporting me for everything. With her encouragements and faithful support, I overcome all the failures and difficulties. Thank her for giving me a lovely family and a cute, smart and beau-tiful daughter.
I especially want to thank my parents, parents-in-law and sister-in-law. Thanks for their supports, encouragements and understanding. I am grateful for all the other members in our family, my grandparents, uncles and aunts for all the sup-port they provided for my study and our family.
Lastly, I would like to give my thanks to all the other people who have helped me. Best wishes to all of you.
University of Groningen March 2019
