This night of NTR Science we dive into the plant archive of the museum and research center Naturalis. There lies a collection of more than six million dried plant specimens, collected over the past five hundred years by famous botanists and scientists.
These plants are a gold mine for evolutionary biologist and postdoctoral researcher Kasper Hendriks. He searches through the archives for the correct DNA information that allows plants to survive. But what can we learn from those dried plants? And how do you extract DNA from a plant that is hundreds of years old?
Ruben Rosen Jacobsen speaks about this with Kasper tonight. Kasper graduated in Maritime Technology from TU Delft and worked as a marine engineer for seven years. But at the age of 28 he changed course and in 2020 he obtained his PhD as an evolutionary biologist from the University of Groningen. He is now conducting research into the lignification of the coal family among plants at Naturalis.
2024-01-11 03:50:09
#Night #of.. #Listen #Brussels #sprouts #cauliflowers #wood #future #Podcasts
