Publications by authors named "Efficient Ncube"

Article Synopsis
  • South Africa is home to various Bulbine species, which are traditionally used by indigenous groups for treating skin conditions, leading to interest in their potential for cosmetic products, but scientific validation is needed for their effectiveness in wound healing.
  • This study aims to investigate the wound-healing properties of five specific Bulbine species through both laboratory (in vitro) and living organism (in vivo) models.
  • The research identifies 11 major compounds in the Bulbine species and assesses their potential for promoting cell migration and wound closure, revealing varying chemical profiles among the species.
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Article Synopsis
  • Lobostemon fruticosus is a traditional medicinal shrub from South Africa, known for treating skin issues like wounds, burns, and eczema, with reported anti-inflammatory and antibacterial properties.
  • The study aimed to scientifically validate the wound healing abilities of L. fruticosus through experiments on both human cell lines and zebrafish larvae.
  • The extract contained several compounds, including potential toxins at low levels, and showed promising results in enhancing cell migration in the scratch assay, indicating its potential for wound healing.
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Stem rust caused by the pathogen f. sp. is a destructive fungal disease-causing major grain yield losses in wheat.

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Affinity selection-mass spectrometry (AS-MS) is a label-free binding assay system that uses UHPLC-MS size-based separation methods to separate target-compound complexes from unbound compounds, identify bound compounds, classify compound binding sites, quantify the dissociation rate constant of compounds, and characterize affinity-extracted ligands. This label-free binding assay, in contrast to conventional biochemical (i.e.

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Global demand for soybean and its products has stimulated research into the production of novel genotypes with higher yields, greater drought and disease tolerance, and shorter growth times. Genetic research may be the most effective way to continue developing high-performing cultivars with desirable agronomic features and improved nutritional content and seed performance. Metabolomics, which predicts the metabolic marker for plant performance under stressful conditions, is rapidly gaining interest in plant breeding and has emerged as a powerful tool for driving crop improvement.

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Ambergris, an excretion product of sperm whales, has been a valued agent in the formulation of perfumes. The composition of ambergris consists of two major components: 40-46% cholestanol type steroids and approximately 25-45% of a triterpenoid known as ambrein. Ambergris undergoes oxidative decomposition in the environment to result in odorous compounds, such as ambraoxide, methylambraoxide, and ambracetal.

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Objectives: Hyphozyma roseoniger, a filamentous yeast, is used as a biocatalyst in the bio-transformation of terpenoids; however, the microorganism's endogenous ability to synthesise and metabolise hydrophobic terpenes and alkanes has not been characterised.

Results: When grown in potato dextrose broth the organism reached the stationary phase at 14 d. The non-polar fraction from cells, harvested every second day, were obtained with ethyl acetate extraction and analysed by gas chromatography with mass-spectrometric detection.

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Background: Plants respond to various stress stimuli by activating an enhanced broad-spectrum defensive ability. The development of novel resistance inducers represents an attractive, alternative crop protection strategy. In this regard, hexanoic acid (Hxa, a chemical elicitor) and azelaic acid (Aza, a natural signaling compound) have been proposed as inducers of plant defense, by means of a priming mechanism.

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Background: Plants contain a myriad of metabolites which exhibit diverse biological activities. However, in-depth analyses of these natural products with current analytical platforms remains an undisputed challenge due to the multidimensional chemo-diversity of these molecules, amplified by both isomerization and conjugation. In this study, we looked at molecules such as hydroxyl-cinnamic acids (HCAs), which are known to exist as positional and geometrical isomers conjugated to different organic acids namely quinic- and isocitric acid.

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is a perrenial herb that grows in tropical regions with numerous medicinal properties mostly attributed to the presence of pentacyclic triterpenoids. Interestingly, this plant also possess a significant amount of phenylpropanoid-derived chlorogenic acids (CGAs) that have recently been reported to confer neuroprotective properties. In a biotechnological attempt to increase the biosynthesis of CGA-derivatives in cultured cells, acibenzolar--methyl was applied as a xenobiotic inducer in combination with quinic acid and shikimic acid as precursor molecules.

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Background: Chlorogenic acids (CGAs) are a class of phytochemicals that are formed as esters between different derivatives of cinnamic acid and quinic acid molecules. In plants, accumulation of these compounds has been linked to several physiological responses against various stress factors; however, biochemical synthesis differs from one plant to another. Although structurally simple, the analysis of CGA molecules with modern analytical platforms poses an analytical challenge.

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