DEPUTY DIRECTOR
IMBM
Contact: marlatuffin@gmail.com, ituffin@uwc.ac.za
Who Am I?
I obtained my PhD in Microbiology in 2003 from the University of Cape Town (UCT), where I studied “Carbohydrate metabolism in Bifidobacterium“. For the following 3 years, I took up a post-doc position in Doug Rawlings’s Biomining Laboratory at the University of Stellenbosch, where I studied the molecular biology of heavy metal resistance in biomining organisms. I joined IMBM in 2006 as a post-doc. In 2008 I was appointed Deputy Director. Sadly this ended my “bench work” days, however, together with Don Cowan and Heide Goodman, I am enjoying the new responsibility of managing and leading IMBM to become a world-renown research institute. In 2009 I took up a Senior Lecturer position in the Department of Biotechnology, and am thoroughly enjoying teaching the following courses: BTY 227: Molecular and Environmental Microbiology; BTY 323: Industrial Biotechnology; BTY 706: Extremophiles.
When not at work, I love to explore various crafts and create masterpieces (mostly in my dreams). Some of my favourites are: scrapbooking, beading, machine embroidery, rubber stamping, soap-making, quilting and fabric-painting. I also love to garden, but the snails and snout beetles usually beat me to it!!! However, being a working mom, there’s very little time left over for crafting and gardening, though I do enjoy all the time I get to spend with my baby girl (Chrystina), husband (Ron) and our new baby (Alicia) due to be born any day now ………. I invite you to visit Ron’s blog: http://justplainron.wordpress.com, to find out more about who we are and what we get up to!
Publications:
Trindade, M., V. Abratt, S. Reid. 2003. Induction of sucrose-utilising genes from Bifidobacterium lactis by sucrose and raffinose. Applied and Environmental Microbiology. 69: 24-32.
Tuffin, M., P. de Groot, S. Deane & D. Rawlings. 2004. Multiple sets of arsenic resistance genes are present within highly arsenic resistant industrial strains of the biomining bacterium, Acidithiobacillus caldus. International Congress Series. 1275: 165-172.
Tuffin, M., P. de Groot, S. Deane & D. Rawlings. 2005. An unusual Tn21-like transposon containing an ars operon is present in highly arsenic resistant strains of the biomining bacterium Acidithiobacillus caldus. Microbiology. 151: 3027-3039.
Tuffin, M., S. Hector, S. Deane & D. Rawlings. 2006. The resistance determinants of a highly arsenic resistant strain of Leptospirillum ferriphilum isolated from a commercial biooxidation tank. Applied and Environmental Microbiology. 72: 2247-2253.
Kotze, AA., Tuffin, IM., Deane, SM & Rawlings, DE. 2006. Cloning and characterization of the chromosomal arsenic resistance genes from Acidithiobacillus caldus and enhanced arsenic resistance on conjugal transfer of ars genes located on transposon TnAtcArs. Microbiology, 152 (12): 3551-3560.
Taylor, M., Tuffin, M., Burton, S., Eley, K., Cowan, D. 2008. Microbial responses to solvent and alcohol stress. Biotechnol. J. Nov;3(11):1388-97.
Taylor, M, Eley, K, Martin, S, Tuffin, IM, Burton, SG, Cowan DA. 2009. Thermophilic ethanologenesis. Future prospects for second generation ethanol production. Trends Biotechnol. 27:398-405
Cowan, D.A., Tuffin, I. M., Robb, F. T. 2010. ‘‘Sequence First, Ask Questions Later’’: The Impact of Next Generation-Omics on the Discovery of Novel Microbial and Lipid Hydrocarbon Metabolism. In: Timmis, Kenneth N. (Ed.) Handbook of Hydrocarbon and Lipid Microbiology, Springer Heidelberg, Vol 4, pp. 3367-3374.
Tuffin, M., Anderson, A., Heath, C., Cowan, D. 2009. Metagenomic gene discovery: How far have we moved into novel sequence space? Biotechnol. J. 4(12): 1671-1683.
Cowan, DA and Tuffin, IM. 2009. Capturing global metabolism. Nature Biotechnology. 27(12): 1132-1133.
Staniland, S., Coppock, M., Tuffin, M., van Zyl, L., Roychoudhury, A. N., Cowan, D. Cobalt uptake and resistance to trace metals in Comamonas testosteroni isolated from a heavy-metal contaminated site in the Zambian Copperbelt. Geomicrobiology Journal. Accepted.
Meiring, T. L., Mulako, I., Tuffin, M., Meyer, Q., Cowan, DA. Retrieval of Full Length Functional Genes using Subtractive Hybridization Magnetic Bead Capture. In Molecular Methods in Metagenomics. Accepted.
Musingarimi, W., Tuffin, M., Cowan, D. Characterisation of the Arsenic Resistance Genes in Bacillus sp. UWC Isolated from Maturing Fly Ash-Acid Mine Drainage Neutralized Solids. South African Journal of Science. Accepted.
Taylor, MP, Van Zyl, L, Tuffin, M, Cowan, DA. Extremophiles and biotechnology: How far have we come? Ch. In Extremophiles: Microbiology and Biotechnology. Antinori, R., ed. Horizon Press. Accepted
