100 years later
By Natalia Giner Laguarda
Were you too busy to figure out what happened in Wageningen during the 100 years? Did you miss the birthday of our university and are you wondering how did we celebrate it?
Thursday 8th of March
This Thursday I had the chance to assist to the “CRISPR-Cas from evolution to revolution”. In this symposium, four speakers talked about the CRISPR-Cas research from different points of view. The symposium covered CRISPR-Cas evolution, mechanism involved, gene therapy, and finally its ethical side. CRISPR-Cas is a heritable adaptive immune system found in bacteria and archaea. Based on biochemical analysis it has been discovered that CRISPRS-Cas systems use a mechanism based on RNA-guided DNA interference. Currently, CRISPR guides have been designed to modify their specificity.
This means that by using CRISPR-Cas systems, any DNA sequence could be specifically targeted.
These main points lead to a revolution in fundamental and applied research. Current research is focused on the natural diversity of CRISPR-Cas systems as well as the characterization of the relation between structure and function of the different CRISPR-associated RNA guides and proteins.
Current research has remodeled the use of Cas proteins. This turned into the generation of a wide variety of CRISPR-Cas applications in biotechnology. I had the chance during this symposium to listen to the four speakers who addressed different aspects of the CRISPR-Cas actual research (Prof. Eugene Koonin, Professor of Evolutionary and Computational Biology, National Center for Biotechnology, Prof. John van der Oost, Professor of Microbiology & Biochemistry, Wageningen University & Research, Prof. Niels Geijsen, Professor of Regenerative Medicine, Hubrecht Institute, Utrecht and a Phd candidate from the group of Annelien Bredenoord, Professor of Ethics of Biomedical Innovation, University Medical Center Utrecht).
Raise your class
Most of the Wageningen students and staff were raising their glasses at midnight on 8 March to celebrate the anniversary of our university. The WUR student and employee band BigBand Sound of Science played at midnight. I have to say it was my first time listening to this amazing band and actually I met Jeroun and his wife whose Wageningen love story shocked me for the whole entire night.
And the university knew how to make us happy, all the beer was free tonight.
Around midnight, Rector Magnificus Arthur Mol announced the beggining of the Wageningen anniversary year. The evening was followed with a laser show that combined the past, present, and future of Wageningen University.
Friday 9th of March
On March 9th 2018, the 100th Dies Natalis took place at the University. The programme covered different topics on the themes of Life, Food and Earth. Many activities took place at the university this Friday. Science, sports, art and business came together this Friday.
To celebrate its birthday, Wageningen threw the party of the century. This party was organized by students and it achieved to bring all the students together in all the associations. With a unique ticket, we had access to 5 different parties in the city centre! The parties include a wide variety of music and a free beer at each place.
This Friday we cooked dinner at a friend’s house to prepare to go to the party of the century. We started going to Nji-Sri. However, the place was extremely crowded, so we decided to quickly move to LUCA. The party at LUCA was actually really nice but we wanted to achieve to go to all places. Then, we went to SSR where there was a silent disco. Finally we moved to CERES where we stayed for the rest of the night.
Finally, we found a lot of friends there but we decided to stay there as we found our most beloved friend, el panda.
El que manda, el panda.
