Dr Antoinette Van Schalkwyk

Post-doctoral Research Fellow

Research Interests

My research interests are as wide as my imagination. During my undergrad studies, I specialized in my true love, Molecular Biology. Since then I used every opportunity to apply this. My MSc was spent characterizing a novel type IVB secretion system of Pseudomonas aeruginosa and its role in biofilm formation. I then followed my other love to Cape Town and did my PhD at the Advanced Research Center for Applied Microbiology at the University of the Western Cape. This study fell under biotechnology and looked at the biodegradation of polyphenolic compounds in processed olive waste water. A significant amount of imagination was required to introduce my beloved molecular techniques in a project lead by chemical engineers. But alas, I generated a chemical bacterial mutant that showed a significant increase in phenol reduction and I could use 2D protein gel electrophoresis and subtractive hybridization techniques in order to investigate the source of the mutation. Currently I am busy with a post-doctoral project which forms part of an EU frame work 6 project entitled: High quality Solanaceous crops for consumer, processors and producers by exploration of natural biodiversity. Our contribution to the consortium is to characterize the whole genome of tomatoes using microarray techniques.

 

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