Category Archives: Home Page

IMBM was awarded two bilateral grants. One program is aimed at furthering work on a biosurfactant produced by an enzyme identified through screening of metagenomic libraries (SA-Germany; Dr. Anita Burger). The second program (SA-France; Prof Marla Trindade) is to develop phage-based … Continue reading →

As part of the Ocean Medicines program, Jatro Kulani Mhlongo one of the IMBM PhD students went on a four month exchange to the University of Aberdeen (Marine Biodiscorvery centre) in Scotland. The main purpose of the exchange was to learn … Continue reading →

Lungelo Mandyoli, an NRF intern in IMBM, applied for and won a Fulbright Forgein Student scholarship to pursue his PhD studies in structural biology in the USA. The Fulbright Program, is an American scholarship program of competitive, merit-based grants for international educational … Continue reading →

Hard work pays off, as demonstrated by Relebohile Matobole (MSc student in IMBM) who walked off with a poster prize at the UWC Science faculty research open day held on Tuesday 28 October 2014. His work showed how microbes isolated … Continue reading →

Victoria Ontong won the prize for the best third year student at UWC Biotechnology. She won a cash prize and trophy presented by Merck representative, Tamara Fedderke. Congrats!

On the 12th of June 2014 the Soccer World Cup kicked off and IMBM was in a celebratory mood ! We took the opportunity to get all the lab members together for a kick-off party on the 13th with Nacho’s, … Continue reading →

IMBM is now the proud host of a Q-Pix 2 colony picking robot, named Pixie. A conversation between Assoc. Prof. Marla Tuffin and Prof Esta van Heerden at UFS (Grant holder for the Q-Pix 2), asking if IMBM could use … Continue reading →

Professor Marcel Jaspars and Dr. Rainer Ebel from the Marine Biodiscovery Centre, University of Aberdeen presented their work in discovery of secondary metabolites from marine and extremophilic sources. The natural chemical diversity from unexplored environments is being used to combat … Continue reading →

“Antibiotic abyss: The extreme quest for new medicines” This is the title of the recently (27 Jan 2014) published New Scientist article showcasing the PharmaSea project which aims to explore extreme marine habitats to discover novel antibiotics. IMBM is a … Continue reading →

The South African Society for Microbiologist (SASM) held their biannual conference this year in Bela Bela, Limpopo, hosted by the University of Witwatersrand. IMBM joined the rest of the South African microbiology community for three days of presentations and posters … Continue reading →