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Department of Chemistry strengthens international ties through International Chemical Symposium

30 June 2021 | Story Dr Nitha Ramnath

organic chemistry_web read more — Dr Charlene Marais, Prof Vladimir Azov and Prof Ulrich Hennecke

The Department of Chemistry at the University of the Free State (UFS) held a successful online International Symposium on Organic Chemistry on 15 June 2021. The symposium brought together scientists from several South African and foreign universities and created a virtual platform for a long-awaited discussion stalled by the COVID-19 pandemic. About 20 participants from universities in South Africa, Belgium, and Germany presented their lectures during the symposium. In addition, this symposium was directed at the postgraduate students in the Department of Chemistry at the UFS, allowing them to present their results to an international audience and to foster their engagement in scientific research.

For more than a year, the COVID-19 pandemic has prevented the common personal communication avenues for the researchers: face-to-face (F2F) conferences, symposia, and workshops. To bridge this gap, Prof Vladimir Azov and Dr Charlene Marais from the Department of Chemistry organised the online meeting for the researchers from the UFS and several other local and foreign universities, all working in the field of organic chemistry.

Online material from the International Symposium on Organic Chemistry is available at here

Collaborative project between the UFS and VUB towards the development of gel-based drug release systems

The symposium also served as a long-awaited inception meeting for the collaborative project between the Organic Chemistry group at the UFS and the Organic Chemistry (ORGC) group at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB). This project is jointly funded by the National Research Foundation (NRF) and FWO (Research Foundation – Flanders); it is aimed at the development of new peptide-based materials with properties controllable by precisely tuned interactions of unnatural amino acids included in the peptide sequence. Such peptides can, for example, be used as smart materials for precisely controllable drug release. The South African team members, directed by Prof Vladimir Azov, will specialise in the development of the new amino acid building blocks, whereas the VUB team, headed by Prof Ulrich Hennecke, will focus on peptide preparation and studies on their properties.

This kick-off meeting was initially planned as a F2F event in June 2020 but was delayed due to the COVID-19 travelling restrictions and finally migrated to a virtual space. This provided an opportunity to present the project proposals and to discuss the initial results in a much broader circle than would have been possible within the common F2F meeting framework.

News Archive

Extending new discoveries in the deep subsurface – UFS paper published in Nature Communications

2015-11-30

Scanning electron microscopy of some of the Eukarya recovered from two different mines. (a) Dochmiotrema sp. (Plathyelminthes), (b) A. hemprichi (Annelida), (c) Mylonchulus brachyurus (Nematoda), (d) Amphiascoides (Arthropoda). Scale bar, 50 µm (a,b), 100 µm (c), 20 µm (d).

Following the discovery of the first Eukarya in the deep subsurface (Nature, 2010) by a research group from the Department of Microbial, Biochemical, and Food Biotechnology at the University of the Free State (UFS) and their international collaborators, intense interest has developed in understanding the diversity of more complex organisms living in these extreme environments.

Prof Gaetan Borgonie from Extreme Life Isyensya, together with a group of UFS researchers, took this research further, resulting in a paper on this research released in Nature Communications – impact factor 11.47. This paper is an extension of the first reports of more complex life at great depths, and their abilities to survive these harsh conditions.

Ten authors from the UFS contributed with the array of expertise needed to define this discovery. The group was supported by staff from the different mining groups, long-term leading collaborators from the USA and Canada, and the idea specialist driver of the paper, Prof Borganie.

“After a sampling campaign that lasted more than two years, we identified that Platyhelminthes, Rotifera, Annelida and Arthropoda are thriving at 1.4 km depths in fissure water up to 12,000-years old in the South African mines of Driefontein and Kopanang,” said Prof Borgonie, who was appointed as associated researcher in the Department of Microbial, Biochemical, and Food Biotechnology.

This paper really opens a “can of worms” so to speak. According to Prof Esta van Heerden from the Department of Microbial, Biochemical and Food Biotechnology at the UFS they extended to define protozoa and fungi. “However, they are present in low numbers,” she said.

Characterisation of the different species reveals that many are opportunistic organisms. In house-adapted video equipment was used to film inside the fissure for the home of the organisms.

This is the first-known study to demonstrate the in situ distribution of biofilms on fissure rock faces using video documentation. Calculations suggest that food, not dissolved oxygen, is the limiting factor for population growth. The discovery of a group of complex multicellular organisms in the underground has important implications for the search for life on other planets in our solar system.

More articles

The strange beasts that live in solid rock deep underground
A microscopic ‘zoo’ is found deep, deep underground

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