Dineo Mailula celebrated the successful completion of her PhD on 14 July with a Prestige Seminar “Catabolism of amino acids and the production of volatiles by Ceratocystis albifundus and other species in the Ceratocystidaceae”. She was joined by several members of her family, friends and FABIans to celebrate the end of her PhD journey at the Institute. Dineo’s primary supervisor for her PhD, Prof. Almuth Hammerbacher, recounted how Dineo had also completed her Honours and Masters degrees under her supervision, passing both with distinction. Dineo had also embarked on three business ventures to supplement her income while completing her PhD. Almuth described her as being warm-hearted, honest and empathetic but also persistent, a good trait in a PhD!

Dineo had completed her PhD under the supervision of Prof. Almuth Hammerbacher, Prof. Brenda Wingfield and Dr Magriet van der Nest. The external examiners for Dineo’s thesis were Prof. Rosie Bradshaw of Massey University in New Zealand and Prof. Karen Jacobs from Stellenbosch University and the internal examiner was Prof. Emma Steenkamp.

Dineo’s PhD is a step towards using fungi in the family Ceratocystidaceae to produce fusel alcohols and acetates essential to the production of flavours and scents in processed food and beverages, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals and can be used as biofuels. Currently mass production of these volatiles is through chemical processes which are environmentally unfriendly. With the increasing demand by consumers for natural flavours, industries and researchers are investigating alternative ways to produce these compounds. However, there has been little research on the metabolic pathways involved in the production of these volatiles in plants, filamentous fungi and bacteria.

This study suggests that differential regulation of aromatic fusel alcohol and branched-chain fusel alcohol biosynthesis is linked to fungal lifestyle, where saprophytic fungi that rely on insect vectors to colonise tree wounds may respond to additional amino acids from phloem, producing compounds that are highly attractive to Nitidulidae beetle vectors which transport them to new wounded trees. Volatiles produced by fungi in this study may also be of benefit in implementing production of fusel alcohols and fusel acetates for industrial scale.