dr. Marian Beekman

Marian Beekman (1972) was trained as a biomedical scientist and studies the role of genetic and phenotypic variation in human healthy aging and longevity. Her research focuses on identifying variation in genomic regions that contribute to metabolic health and longevity, where variation in gene expression, DNA sequence and methylation are signs of interest. The integration of genetic data with a wide range of omics data to investigate how genetic variation can contribute to healthy aging is one of the main aims of her research. Therefore, she combines the thorough phenotyping of the participants of the Leiden Long Life Study with the data analysis in the setting of molecular epidemiology.

Areas of expertise:

• Genetics
• Familiair studies
• Integration of omics data

Main study population:

Leiden LangLeven Studie:

• 644 90-year-old siblings from 421 families
• 1671 descendants and 744 partners thereof as control population
  • DNA
  • RNA (PAXgene)
  • Urine (morning urine)
  • Plasma (EDTA, Citrate)
  • Serum (fasted, non-fasted)
• Illumina OmniExpress, 660W-quad SNP array
• In 220 Nineties: Complete Genomics Whole Genome Sequence
• Biocrates metabolomics platform
• LC-MS Lipidomics platform Netherlands Metabolomics Center, Leiden
• IgG glycosilatie platform Parasitologie, LUMC, Leiden
• 1H-NMR metabolomics platform Parasitologie, LUMC, Leiden

PhD students supervised:

Niels van den Berg, dissertation title: ‘Family matters: a genealogical inquiry into the familial component of longevity‘ in 2020
Erik van den Akker, dissertation title: ‘Computational biology in human aging – an omics data integration approach‘ in 2015
Joris Deelen, dissertation title: ‘Genetic and biomarker studies of human longevity‘ in 2014 (cum laude)
Willemijn Passoors, dissertation title: ‘Transcriptomic studies in human ageing and longevity‘ in 2013