Live stream of a lecture by Prof Marilize Le Roes-Hill (ADD Hub collaborator at CPUT).
25 April 2023 - 3pm SAST
See our Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/antimicrobialdrugdiscovery) for a live stream viewing of this lecture.
ABSTRACT: For more than 100 years, members of the bacterial phylum, Actinomycetota, specifically the Class Actinomycetes, have attracted interest from various researchers and industries. At first, the focus was on the ability of these bacteria to cause serious infections in humans, animals, and plants. This was later followed by the discovery that they can produce metabolites exhibiting a vast range of bioactivities: antibacterial, antifungal, antiviral, antiparasitic and more. Their ability to produce these metabolites lead to studies focused on the enzymes involved in their production, which in turn highlighted the ability of this bacterial phylum to produce industrially relevant enzymes. Surprisingly, very little is known about their diversity in different environments and is often only highlighted in bacterial diversity overview studies. In this talk, I will take you on a snapshot journey focused on actinomycete diversity (from peatlands, marine environments, Rooibos plants, and wastewater), our search for novel enzymes (alginate lyases, cellulases, multicopper oxidases, tyrosinases and peroxidases), the use of tools such as PyEED and EnzymeML in learning more about the enzymes of interest, potential applications of these enzymes, and the search for novel antimicrobial compounds through the use of a combined omics approach of metabolomics and genomics.