Klaartje Houben

Klaartje Houben, DSM-Firmenich, NL 

"Metabolomics on fermented milk products"

The taste, texture and shelf-life of fermented milk products are largely determined by the metabolomics of the dairy cultures in the application. As a dairy culture provider, we at dsm-firmenich use a wide range of analytical techniques to follow relevant metabolite levels in fermented dairy products. This presentation will deep dive in the application of different NMR based approaches to get insights in the metabolite levels of yogurt products. In addition, our LC- and GC-MS based approaches for untargeted yogurt metabolomics will be presented.  

Biography 

Klaartje studied Chemistry at Utrecht University, with a specialization in NMR spectroscopy applied to biomolecules. During her PhD, also in Utrecht, she continued to develop NMR techniques to study protein structure and dynamics. Next, she went to France for a post-doc at the Institut de Biologie Structurale in Grenoble, where she used NMR to provide insights on the functional dynamics of unstructured viral protein domains. After a successful fellowship application from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO), she returned to the Netherlands to study membrane proteins using both liquid- and solid-state NMR. In 2014 she was appointed assistant professor at Utrecht University and took up the facility management responsibilities for the uNMR-NL consortium of high-field NMR facilities in the Netherlands. In 2018, Klaartje decided to trade academic research for research in the industry and she became the head of the NMR team at the DSM biotechnology center. Currently, she combines responsibilities for the NMR discipline at dsm-firmenich (Delft) with a senior scientist analysis role. Her research activities focus on the characterization of food-related biomolecules in relation to food texture and on metabolite profiling for fermented milk products in relation to product shelf-life.