Niels van den Berg | 22-01-2020 | Family matters: a genealogical inquiry into the familial component of longevity Identifying genes that code for proteins associated to longevity is an important aspect of aging research. These longevity genes likely represent key mechanisms of a life-long decreased mortality and a decreased probability of age-related disease causing persons [...]

Rick Mourits | 17-12-2019 | Exceptional lives, extraordinary families. Familial clustering of longevity in the 19th and early-20th centuries On 4 October 1829, Leendert Wisse was born in Meliskerke, a small, rural town on the island of Walcheren in Zeeland. In many ways, Leendert’s life was unexceptional. He was a farmer’s son and he worked [...]

René Luijk | 16-10-2019 |A Study into Genes Encoding Longevity in Humans In this thesis, we aimed to better understand how genetic variation affect the processes underlying health and disease, as trait-associated genetic variants are often located in non-coding regions. This hampers their interpretability, and has prompted the exploration of their effects on transcriptional [...]

Jesse Krijthe | 07-01-2018 | Robust semi-supervised learning: projections, limits & constraints In many domains of science and society, the amount of data being gathered is increasing rapidly. To estimate input-output relationships that are often of interest, supervised learning techniques rely on a specific type of data: labeled examples for which we know both [...]

Jonathan Vis | 21-12-2016 | Algorithms for the Description of Molecular Sequences Unambiguous sequence variant descriptions are important in reporting the outcome of clinical diagnostic DNA tests. The standard nomenclature of the Human Genome Variation Society (HGVS) describes the observed variant sequence relative to a given reference sequence. We propose an efficient algorithm for the extraction of HGVS descriptions [...]

Marjon Stijntjes | 12-10-2016 |A Study into Genes Encoding Longevity in Humans Human ageing is characterized by a gradual decline in cognitive and physical performance strongly determining someone’s functional abilities and quality of life. In this thesis, insights into these age-related changes and most importantly their interactions are given, which might be suggestive for [...]

Erik van den Akker | 28-02-2015 | Computational Biology in Human Aging. An omics data integration approach Throughout this thesis, human aging and its relation to health are studied in the context of two parallel though complementary lines of research: biomarkers and genetics. The search for informative biomarkers of aging focuses on easy accessible [...]

Joris Deelen |25-06-2014 | Genetic and biomarker studies of human longevity  The aim of this thesis was to identify novel lifespan regulating loci that influence human longevity and population mortality. To this end, we performed two genome-wide association studies, one of long-lived individuals from the family-based Leiden Longevity Study (LLS) and an extended one [...]

Maarten Rozing| 21-09-2011 | Endocrine and metabolic features of familial longevity The Leiden Longevity Study This thesis discusses the metabolic and endocrine characteristics of long-lived Dutch families. We found that familial longevity is marked by low thyroid function and preserved insulin senitivity. The second part of this thesis adresses the Gompertz law of mortality [...]