Position: Technical officer / Senior Researcher
Contact: 2882199@uwc.ac.za
Research project: Organisms and genes for thermophilic ethanologenesis
This is a commercially funded project by an industrial partner based in the United Kingdom. As part of the team working on this project, my role is to clone, express / purify and characterize novel pyruvate decarboxylases that have been identified during screening of organisms that produce high ethanol yields. If the enzyme does not naturally work at high temperatures we then have to, through a variety of directed evolution techniques, try and adapt these proteins to function at the higher temperatures.
Publications: Goldschmidt, G. K., M. N. Gardner, L. J. van Zyl, S. M. Deane, and D. E. Rawlings. 2003. A promiscuous, broad-host-range, IncQ-like plasmid isolated from an industrial strain of Acidithiobacillus caldus, its accessory DNA and potential to participate in the horizontal gene pool of biomining and other bacteria, p. 1249-1259.In M. Tsezos, A. Hatzikioseyian, and E. Remoundaki (ed.), Biohydrometallurgy: a sustainable technology in evolution. Selected papers from the 15th Int. Biohydrometall. Symp., Athens, Greece, 14 to 19 September 2003. National Technical University of Athens Press, Athens, Greece.
Van Zyl, L. J., S. M. Deane and D. E. Rawlings. 2003. Analysis of the Mobilization Region of the Broad-Host-Range IncQ-Like Plasmid pTC-F14 and Its Ability To Interact with a Related Plasmid, pTF-FC2. J. Bacteriol. 185: 6104-6111.
Coram, N. J., L. J. van Zyl, S.M. Deane and D. E. Rawlings. 2005. Isolation, Sequence Analysis, and Comparison of Two Plasmids (28 and 29 Kilobases) from the Biomining Bacterium Leptospirillum ferrooxidans ATCC 49879. Appl. Environ. Microbiol. 71: 7515-7522.
Van Zyl, L. J., S. M. Deane, L. A. Louw and D. E. Rawlings. 2008. Presence of a Family of Plasmids (29 to 65 Kilobases) with a 26-Kilobase Common Region in Different Strains of the Sulfur-Oxidizing Bacterium Acidithiobacillus caldus. Appl. Environ. Microbiol. 74: 4300-4308.
Van Zyl, L. J. and D. E. Rawlings . 2008. Construction of arsB and tetH Mutants of the Sulfur-Oxidizing Bacterium, Acidithiobacillus caldus by Marker Exchange. Appl. Environ. Microbiol. AEM.01235-08v1.
Staniland, S., Coppock, M., Tuffin, M., van Zyl, L., Roychoudhury, A. N., Cowan, D. (2010) Cobalt uptake and resistance to trace metals in Comamonas testosteroni isolated from a heavy-metal contaminated site in the Zambian Copperbelt. Geomicrobiology Journal. 27:656-668
Taylor, MP, Van Zyl, L, Tuffin, M, Cowan, DA. (2012) Extremophiles and biotechnology: How far have we come? Ch. In Extremophiles: Microbiology and Biotechnology. Antinori, R., ed. Caister Academic press.
Who am I?: I am originally from Namibia. I came to South Africa in 1997 to start my tertiary education at the University of Stellenbosch. I obtained a BSc, 1st class BSc (Hons) and then a 1st class MSc degree. After completion of my MSc degree in 2003, I continued working at the University for my then supervisor Professor Douglas Rawlings till mid 2008 when I made the move to join the IMBM group.
When I’m not in the lab I like to play golf, fish and I’m a bit of a computer hardware enthusiast
