Research interests

My research mainly focuses on bacteria that are associated with marine sponges and sea cucumbers. I am excited to learn more about the ecological roles of these bacteria, and particularly in the principles that guide the association of specific bacteria with distinct marine invertebrate hosts. Furthermore, I am interested in these bacteria as sources of novel natural products with clinically relevant bioactive properties. Both these research themes are linked in that knowledge with regards to bioactive compounds may also provide insights into possible host-symbiont relations. The large number of described sponge species (>8,500), many of which have unique bacterial communities, provide us with enormous biodiversity that is waiting to be explored.

Education

2012 – 2016    PhD student at the Laboratory of Microbiology, Wageningen University, The Netherlands. Thesis title: Antibiotic resistance reservoirs: the cases of sponge and human gut microbiota.

2008 – 2011    MSc in Clinical Neurosciences at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

2004 – 2008    MSc in Medical Biotechnology at Wageningen University, The Netherlands.

2001 – 2004    BSc in Biotechnology at Wageningen University, The Netherlands.

List of Publications

Versluis D, de Evgrafov M.R., Sommer M.O.A., Sipkema D., Smidt H., van Passel M.W.J.. 2016. Sponge microbiota are a reservoir of functional antibiotic resistance genes. Front. Microbiol. 7: 1848.

Versluis D, D'Andrea M.M., Ramiro Garcia J., Leimena M.M., Hugenholtz F., Zhang J., Ozturk B., Nylund L., Sipkema D., van Schaik W., de Vos W.M., Kleerebezem M., Smidt H., van Passel M.W.J.. 2015. Mining microbial metatranscriptomes for expression of antibiotic resistance genes under natural conditions. Sci. Rep. 5: 11981.

Buelow E., Gonzalez T.B., Versluis D., Oostdijk E.A., Ogilvie L.A., van Mourik M.S., Oosterink E., van Passel M.W.J., Smidt H., D'Andrea M.M., de Been M., Jones B.V., Willems R.J., Bonten M.J., van Schaik W.. 2014. Effects of selective digestive decontamination (SDD) on the gut resistome. J Antimicrob Chemother 69: 2215-2223.