I am an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine of Utrecht University, The Netherlands, staff member of the WHO Collaborating Centre for Reference and Research on Campylobacter and Antimicrobial Resistance and provide services for Janssen Vaccines and Prevention. I am a visiting scientist at the Quadram Institute.

I obtained a PhD from University of Groningen, Molecular Genetics, in 2007. After this, I worked at University College Cork in Ireland and Radboud University Medical Centre in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, before joining Utrecht University.

My focus is on analysis of bacterial (meta-)genomes for comparative genomics, molecular epidemiology and linking bacterial genotype to phenotype.

Key publications

van der Graaf-Van Bloois L, Wagenaar JA, Zomer AL. RFPlasmid: predicting plasmid sequences from short-read assembly data using machine learning. Microb Genomics. 2021;7:000683. doi:10.1099/MGEN.0.000683/
Ricardo Castellanos L, van der Graaf-Van Bloois L, Donado-Godoy P, Veldman K, Duarte F, Acuña MT, et al. Antimicrobial Resistance in Salmonella enterica Serovar Paratyphi B Variant Java in Poultry from Europe and Latin America. Emerg Infect Dis. 2020;26:1164. doi:10.3201/EID2606.191121.
van der Graaf–van Bloois L, Duim B, Miller WG, Forbes KJ, Wagenaar JA, Zomer A. Whole genome sequence analysis indicates recent diversification of mammal-associated Campylobacter fetus and implicates a genetic factor associated with H2S production. BMC Genomics. 2016;17:713. doi:10.1186/s12864-016-3058-7.
Cremers AJ, Zomer AL, Gritzfeld JF, Ferwerda G, van Hijum SA, Ferreira DM, et al. The adult nasopharyngeal microbiome as a determinant of pneumococcal acquisition. Microbiome. 2014;2:44.
O’Connell Motherway M, Zomer A, Leahy SC, Reunanen J, Bottacini F, Claesson MJ, et al. Functional genome analysis of Bifidobacterium breve UCC2003 reveals type IVb tight adherence (Tad) pili as an essential and conserved host-colonization factor. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2011;108:11217–22. doi:10.1073/pnas.1105380108.