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From bacteriophages to biosurfactants: exploring the multiverse of microbiology
THE 45 UNIQUELY OBSESSIVE PEOPLE who work at UWC’s Institute for Microbial Biotechnology and Metagenomics (IMBM) know they won’t discover more than an immeasurably tiny percentage of this group of viruses that only infect bacteria, but they’re happy to devote much of their careers to it. The IMBM has identifi ed more than 130 phages that live on human skin and many others that thrive in a range of extreme environments.
The IMBM researches microbial life, but it has a purpose beyond simply discovering tiny life forms. It was established as a research institute in the Department of Biotechnology in 2007 (its earlier guise, the Advanced Research Centre for Applied Microbiology, was established in 2001) to develop useful biotechnological applications of research in microbiology. Based in the Life Sciences Building, the Institute’s work includes international collaborations encompassing disciplines such as microbiology, genomics, molecular biology, enzymology, biochemistry, structural biology, nanotechnology, bioinformatics and analytical chemistry. Typifying its collegial, collaborative approach, it routinely makes its advanced laboratory facilities available to researchers from other departments and institutions.
“Collaborations with industry and academia have been invaluable towards facilitating our involvement in multidisciplinary projects, where we can focus on our core expertise while still ensuring that what we initiate can be translated and developed further along the discovery pipeline. This has also been crucial for skills and knowledge transfer, especially for postgraduate students, many of whom have received the opportunity to exchange with an internationally leading laboratory to advance aspects of their research projects,” says Professor Marla Trindade, the Director of the IMBM. One of the IMBM’s areas of interest is studying the adaptations of organisms thriving in extreme environments such as deep ocean trenches and hot springs, in the hope of finding useful applications in biotechnology. For example, in the international Ocean Medicines Project, the IMBM team collected marine invertebrates associated microorganisms (symbionts) that produce bioactive compounds with pharmacological properties that could be optimised for pharmaceutical development, such as the treatment of infections caused by multidrug-resistant pathogens.
The IMBM also conducts important research on potentially high-value biochemicals, including functional polymers and biosurfactants, for application in industries as diverse as cosmetics, food, agriculture and mining.
In scientific parlance, surfactants are ‘amphipathic molecules with both hydrophilic and hydrophobic moieties that partition preferentially at the interface between fluid phases such as oil/water or air/water interfaces’ (in plainer English, they align part of themselves to water and part to the other substance at the interface, reducing the surface tension and acting like a bridge). They’re what make detergents foam, mayonnaise emulsify and cooking spray non-stick.
Synthetic surfactants are, however, increasingly considered an environmental risk because of their toxic nature and their difficulty in being degraded in the environment. Biosurfactants (biologically produced surfactants) are biodegradable and generally more environmentally friendly.
“Biosurfactants have the potential to replace any synthetic surfactant and, moreover, introduce some unique properties. Biosurfactants have therefore gathered a lot of interest as potential alternatives for application in detergents, personal care products, agricultural chemicals and in food processing in the last ten years,” says Prof Trindade.
The IMBM has discovered a novel biosurfactant, a lyso-ornithine lipid (from a South African lake). The genes encoding the production of the lipid were isolated using metagenomics. The IMBM has received national and international industry interest in this compound for inclusion in personal care products, to co-formulate with a green biocide that has been commercialised for industrial water treatment, as an adjuvant for biocontrol and plant growth stimulants, and as an ingredient in food, beverages and dietary supplements. The patent for the biosurfactant has now been registered in Europe and South Africa, a very important (and expensive) step towards its commercialisation. Through numerous collaborations, the IMBM is in the next phase of development to increase production to an industrial scale.
The IMBM is not only contributing to UWC’s reputation for scientifi c research through its rigorous scholarship and enthusiasm (epitomised by Prof Trindade, who holds the prestigious DST/NRF SARChI Research Chair in Microbial Genomics and was the 2015 winner of the DST Distinguished Young Women Researcher award), but also to the university’s strategic objective of promoting innovation and economic growth.
