Wet lab internship at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

“Opticult”: clever determination of good conditions for survival and resuscitation of
microorganisms

The rate of survival and efficiency of resuscitation are important properties of preserved
microbial cultures used in industry and consumer products. Culture conditions and other
treatments applied before and preservation determine these properties to a large extent. A
problem in this field is that survival and resuscitation depend on many factors which differ for
species and sometimes even strains. This makes the optimization of preservation conditions for
a particular bacterial strain a lot of labor-intensive guesswork. To facilitate and rationalize this
process the Systems Biology Lab and NIZO Food research want to develop a method that
allows rapid identification of “weak spots” in strains of interest, as well as conditions that make
them more robust to cell damage during preservation. This method will yield both fundamental
insight in bacterial death and survival as well as industrially applicable knowledge.

We offer an internship in which you will start the development of this method. In particular, we
will investigate the utility of several fluorescent probes to report the “health” status of the
bacterial cell. This work will form the foundation of a larger project foreseen for the future. You
will carry out the work mainly at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and occasionally at NIZO Food
Research (Ede, Netherlands) in collaboration with companies that produce bacterial cultures for
industrial and consumer applications.

Techniques used:

• Growth of different species of bacteria
• Testing and optimization of the application of fluorescent probes
• Measurement of survival rates

We require and enthusiastic, hard working internship student with experience in the wet lab,
preferably but not necessarily with microorganisms.

• Start of the project: between April and July 2025
• Duration of the project: 5 Months (excluding holiday)
• We offer a monthly financial compensation of EUR 400

Contact:

Dr. Douwe Molenaar (d.molenaar@vu.nl) or Dr. Herwig Bachmann (h.bachmann@vu.nl)