Dutch researcher on cover of Nature
14 Aug 2008
Dutch researcher Freek Vonk from Leiden University recently made it to the cover of Nature due to his ground-breaking research on snake fangs.
When faced with a hissing snake rising up in front of them, most people do not wonder: ‘Is the venomous fang at the front or at the back of its mouth?' But that is exactly what biologist Freek Vonk, of Leiden University in the Netherlands, has asked himself over the past few years.
Research question
He pioneered a cooperation project that looked for an answer to the question that has been tormenting evolutionary biologists for a century: 'With some snakes the fang is at the front of their mouth, with others it is at the back. Where was this fang located with the original prehistoric snake?' Vonk and his colleagues finally managed to settle this matter. The correct answer is 'at the back of the mouth' and the editors of the famous magazine 'Nature' were so enthusiastic about this discovery that Vonk and his partners got to write the cover story.
International effort
The publication in Nature is the result of an international cooperation between researchers of the Leiden University and institutes in the United States, Australia and Israel. It instantly made Freek Vonk famous: media from across the world covered the venomous fang issue.
Research grant
Vonk is reaping the profits from this success. The Dutch Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) awarded him a special research grant of 150,000 Euros to pursue a PhD in the follow-up of this project.