Browsing Faculty of Natural Sciences by Author "Christoffels, Alan"
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The African Coelecanth genome provides insights into tetrapod evolution
Christoffels, Alan; Hesse, Uljana; Gamieldien, Junaid; Panji, Sumir; Picone, Barbara; Van Heusden, Peter (Macmillan Publishers, 2013)The discovery of a living coelacanth specimen in 1938 was remarkable, as this lineage of lobe-finned fish was thought to have become extinct 70 million years ago. The modern coelacanth looks remarkably similar to many of ... -
Challenges of biobanking in South Africa to facilitate indigenous research in an environment burdened with human immunodeficiency virus, tuberculosis, and emerging non-communicable diseases
Abayomi, Akin; Christoffels, Alan; Grewal, Ravnit; Karam, Locunda A.; Rossouw, Catherine; Staunton, Ciara; Swanepoel, Carmen; van Rooyen, Beverley (Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., 2013)The high burden of infectious diseases and the growing problem of noncommunicable and metabolic disease syndromes in South Africa (SA) forces a more focused research approach to facilitate cutting-edge scientific growth ... -
Cheminformatic Characterization of Natural Antimicrob al Products for the Development of New Lead Compounds
Egieyeh, Samuel Ayodele; Oselusi, Samson Olaitan; Christoffels, Alan (MDPI, 2021)The growing antimicrobial resistance (AMR) of pathogenic organisms to currently pre- scribed drugs has resulted in the failure to treat various infections caused by these superbugs. Therefore, to keep pace with the ... -
Cheminformatic profiling and hit prioritization of natural products with activities against Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus (MRSA)
Oselusi, Samson O.; Egieyeh, Samuel A.; Christoffels, Alan (MPDI, 2021)Several natural products (NPs) have displayed varying in vitro activities against methicillinresistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). However, few of these compounds have not been developed into potential antimicrobial ... -
Cheminformatic Profiling and Hit Prioritization of Natural Products with Activities against Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA)
Oselusi, Samson, O; Egieyeh, Samuel, A; Christoffels, Alan (Molecules, 2021-06)Several natural products (NPs) have displayed varying in vitro activities against methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). However, few of these compounds have not been developed into potential antimicrobial ... -
Chromosomal-level assembly of the Asian seabass genome using long sequence reads and multi-layered scaffolding
Vij, Shubha; Van Heusden, Peter; Christoffels, Alan; Mbandi, Stanley K.; Mwangi, Sarah (Public Library of Science, 2016)We report here the ~670 Mb genome assembly of the Asian seabass (Lates calcarifer), a tropical marine teleost. We used long-read sequencing augmented by transcriptomics, optical and genetic mapping along with shared ... -
Comparative analysis of testis and ovary transcriptomes in zebrafish by combining experimental and computational tools
Li, Yang; Chia, Jer, M; Bartfai, Richard; Christoffels, Alan; Yue, Gen, H; Ding, Ke; Ho, Mei, Y; Hill, James, A; Stupka, Elia; Orban, Laszlo (Wiley, 2004)Studies on the zebrafish model have contributed to our understanding of several important developmental processes, especially those that can be easily studied in the embryo. However, knowledge on late events such as gonad ... -
Computational characterization of iron metabolism in the tsetse disease vector, glossina morsitans: Ire stem-loops
Dashti, Zahra Jalali Sefid; Gamieldien, Junaid; Christoffels, Alan (BMC, 2016)Iron metabolism and regulation is an indispensable part of species survival, most importantly for blood feeding insects. Iron regulatory proteins are central regulators of iron homeostasis, whose binding to iron response ... -
Cross-species multiple environmental stress responses: An integrated approach to identify candidate genes for multiple stress tolerance in sorghum (Sorghum bicolor (L.) Moench) and related model species
Woldesemayat, Adugna Abdi; Modise, David M.; Gemeildien, Junaid; Ndimba, Bongani K.; Christoffels, Alan (Public Library of Science, 2018)BACKGROUND Crop response to the changing climate and unpredictable effects of global warming with adverse conditions such as drought stress has brought concerns about food security to the fore; crop yield loss is a major ... -
DAMPD: a manually curated antimicrobial peptide database
Sundararajan, Vijayaraghava S.; Gabere, Musa N.; Pretorius, Ashley; Adam, Saleem; Christoffels, Alan; Minna, Lehvaslaiho; Archer, John A.C.; Bajic, Vladimir B. (Oxford University Press, 2012)The demand for antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) is rising because of the increased occurrence of pathogens that are tolerant or resistant to conventional antibiotics. Since naturally occurring AMPs could serve as templates ... -
Database for exploration of functional context of genes implicated in ovarian cancer
Kaur, Mandeer; Radovanovic, Aleksander; Essack, Magbubah; Schaefer, Ulf; Maqungo, Monique; Kibler, Tracey; Schmeier, Sebastian; Christoffels, Alan; Narasimhan, Kothandaraman; Choolani, Mahesh; Bajic, Vladimir B. (Oxford Journals, 2009)Ovarian cancer (OC) is becoming the most common gynecological cancer in developed countries and the most lethal gynecological malignancy. It is also the fifth leading cause of all cancer-related deaths in women. The ... -
DDEC: Dragon databaseof genes implicated in esophageal cancer
Essack, Magbubah; Radovanovic, Aleksander; Schaefer, Ulf; Schmeier, Sebastian; Seshadri, Sundararajan V.; Christoffels, Alan; Kaur, Mandeep; Bajic, Vladimir B. (BioMed Central, 2009)Esophageal cancer ranks eighth in order of cancer occurrence. Its lethality primarily stems from inability to detect the disease during the early organ-confined stage and the lack of effective therapies for advanced-stage ... -
DDESC: Dragon database for exploration of sodium channels in human
Sagar, Sunil; Kaur, Mandeep; Dawe, Adam; Seshadri, Sundararajan V.; Christoffels, Alan; Schaefer, Ulf; Radovanovic, Aleksander; Bajic, Vladimir B. (BMC Cancer, 2008)Sodium channels are heteromultimeric, integral membrane proteins that belong to a superfamily of ion channels. The mutations in genes encoding for sodium channel proteins have been linked with several inherited genetic ... -
DDPC: Dragon database of genes associated with prostate cancer
Maqungo, Monique; Kaur, Mandeep; Kwofie, Samuel K.; Radovanovic, Aleksander; Schaefer, Ulf; Schmeier, Sebastian; Oppon, Ekow; Christoffels, Alan; Bajic, Vladimir B. (Oxford Journals, 2011)Prostate cancer (PC) is one of the most commonly diagnosed cancers in men. PC is relatively difficult to diagnose due to a lack of clear early symptoms. Extensive research of PC has led to the availability of a large amount ... -
Designing novel possible kinase inhibitor derivatives as therapeutics against Mycobacterium tuberculosis: An in silico study
Shahbaaz, Mohd; Nkaule, Anati; Christoffels, Alan (Scientific Reports, 2019)Rv2984 is one of the polyphosphate kinases present in Mycobacterium tuberculosis involved in the catalytic synthesis of inorganic polyphosphate, which plays an essential role in bacterial virulence and drug resistance. ... -
Evolution and structural analysis of Glossina morsitans (Diptera; Glossinidae) Tetraspanins
Murungi, Edwin, K.; Kariithi, Henry, M.; Adunga, Vincent; Obonya, Meshack; Christoffels, Alan (MDPI, Basel, Switzerland, 2014)Tetraspanins are important conserved integral membrane proteins expressed in many organisms. Although there is limited knowledge about the full repertoire, evolution and structural characteristics of individual members ... -
The evolving SARS-CoV-2 epidemic in Africa: Insights from rapidly expanding genomic surveillance
Tegally, Houriiyah; San, James E.; Christoffels, Alan (American Association for the Advancement of Science, 2022)Investment in severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) sequencing in Africa over the past year has led to a major increase in the number of sequences that have been generated and used to track the ... -
Exploration of scaffolds from natural products with antiplasmodial activities, currently registered antimalarial drugs and public malarial screen data
Egieyeh, Samuel; Syce, James; Christoffels, Alan; Malan, Sarel F. (MDPI, 2016)In light of current resistance to antimalarial drugs, there is a need to discover new classes of antimalarial agents with unique mechanisms of action. Identification of unique scaffolds from natural products with in vitro ... -
Genome sequence of the tsetse fly (glossina morsitans): vector of African trypanosomiasis
Christoffels, Alan; Obiero, George F.; Harkins, Gordon William (American Association for the Advancement of Science, 2014)Tsetse flies are the sole vectors of human African trypanosomiasis throughout sub-Saharan Africa. Both sexes of adult tsetse feed exclusively on blood and contribute to disease transmission. Notable differences between ... -
Genome-wide SNP identification by high-throughput sequencing and selective mapping allows sequence assembly positioning using a framework genetic linkage map
Celton, Jean M.; Christoffels, Alan; Sargant, Daniel J.; Xu, Xiangming; Rees, Jasper G. (BioMed Central, 2010)Determining the position and order of contigs and scaffolds from a genome assembly within an organism’s genome remains a technical challenge in a majority of sequencing projects. In order to exploit contemporary technologies ...