Browsing Faculty of Natural Sciences by Author "van Zyl, Leonardo Joaquim"
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Antibacterial activities of bacteria isolated from the marine sponges Isodictya compressa and Higginsia bidentifera collected from Algoa Bay, South Africa
Matobole, Relebohile Matthew; van Zyl, Leonardo Joaquim; Parker-Nance, Shirley; Davies-Coleman, Michael T.; Trindade, Marla (MDPI AG, 2017)Due to the rise inmulti-drug resistant pathogens and other diseases, there is renewed interest in marine sponge endosymbionts as a rich source of natural products (NPs). The South African marine environment is rich in ... -
Diversity of dsDNA viruses in a South African hot spring assessed by metagenomics and microscopy
Zablocki, Olivier; van Zyl, Leonardo Joaquim; Kirby, Bronwyn; Trindade, Marla (MDPI, 2017)The current view of virus diversity in terrestrial hot springs is limited to a few sampling sites. To expand our current understanding of hot spring viral community diversity, this study aimed to investigate the first ... -
Factors influencing pigment production by halophilic bacteria and its effect on brine evaporation rates
Silva-Castro, Gloria Andrea; Moyo, Anesu Conrad; Khumalo, Londiwe; van Zyl, Leonardo Joaquim; Petrik, Leslie F.; Trindade, Marla (Wiley, 2018)The disposal of reject brine, a highly concentrated waste by-product generated by various industrial processes, represents a major economic and environmental challenge. The common practice in dealing with the large ... -
Genomic characterization of a prophage, Smhb1, that Infects Salinivibrio kushneri BNH isolated from a Namib Desert saline spring
Olonade, Israel; van Zyl, Leonardo Joaquim; Trindade, Marla (MDPI, 2021)Recent years have seen the classification and reclassification of many viruses related to the model enterobacterial phage P2. Here, we report the identification of a prophage (Smhb1) that infects Salinivibrio kushneri BNH ... -
Isolation and characterization of strain exiguobacterium sp. Krl4, a producer of bioactive secondary metabolites from a Tibetan glacier
Tedesco, Pietro; Esposito, Fortunato Palma; van Zyl, Leonardo Joaquim (MPDI, 2021)Extremophilic microorganisms represent a unique source of novel natural products. Among them, cold adapted bacteria and particularly alpine microorganisms are still underexplored. Here, we describe the isolation and ... -
Metaviromics of namib desert salt pans: a novel lineage of haloarchaeal salterproviruses and a rich source of ssDNA viruses
Adriaenssens, Evelien M.; van Zyl, Leonardo Joaquim (MDPI, 2016)Viral communities of two different salt pans located in the Namib Desert, Hosabes and Eisfeld, were investigated using a combination of multiple displacement amplification of metaviromic DNA and deep sequencing, and provided ... -
Novel phages of healthy skin metaviromes from South Africa
van Zyl, Leonardo Joaquim; Abrahams, Yoonus; Stander, Emily Amor; Kirby-McCollough, Bronwyn; Jourdain, Roland; Clavaud, Cécile; Breton, Lionel; Trindade, Marla (Nature Publishing Group, 2018)Recent skin metagenomic studies have investigated the harbored viral diversity and its possible influence on healthy skin microbial populations, and tried to establish global patterns of skin-phage evolution. However, ... -
Structure and functional characterization of pyruvate decarboxylase from Gluconacetobacter diazotrophicus
van Zyl, Leonardo Joaquim; Schubert, Wolf-Dieter; Tuffin, Marla I.; Cowan, Donald A. (BioMed Central, 2014)BACKGROUND: Bacterial pyruvate decarboxylases (PDC) are rare. Their role in ethanol production and in bacterially mediated ethanologenic processes has, however, ensured a continued and growing interest. PDCs from ... -
Three novel bacteria associated with two centric diatom species from the Mediterranean Sea, Thalassiosira rotula and Skeletonema marinoi
Di Costanzo, Federica; Di Dato, Valeria; van Zyl, Leonardo Joaquim (MPDI, 2021)Diatoms are a successful group of microalgae at the base of the marine food web. For hundreds of millions of years, they have shared common habitats with bacteria, which favored the onset of interactions at different ... -
Virome assembly and annotation: A surprise in the Namib Desert
Hesse, Uljana; Van Heusden, Peter; Kirby, Bronwyn; Olonade, Israel; van Zyl, Leonardo Joaquim; Trindade, Marla (Frontiers Research Foundation, 2017)Sequencing, assembly, and annotation of environmental virome samples is challenging. Methodological biases and differences in species abundance result in fragmentary read coverage; sequence reconstruction is further ...