A large percentage of the Dutch population is affected by hay fever which is induced by plant pollen getting released into the air. These pollen can be captured by a fixed or newly developed handheld pollen sampler and identified with a microscope. This microscopic identification (based on morphology) approach is a very time consuming process. A new approach using DNA analysis with Next Generation Sequencing platforms at the LUMC is used with a bioinformatics pipeline at Naturalis.
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