Professor Zander Myburg

 Department of Genetics

[email protected]

Forest Tree Molecular Genetics

Zander Myburg studied as a Fulbright Scholar at North Carolina State University and received a PhD in Forestry and Genetics in 2001. He is currently a Professor of Genetics in the Faculty of Natural and Agricultural Sciences and holds the Chair in Forest Genomics and Biotechnology at UP.

Prof. Myburg is the coordinator of the international Eucalyptus Genome Network (EUCAGEN) and the lead investigator of the US Department of Energy (DOE) Eucalyptus Genome Project. 

He was awarded the National Research Foundation President’s Award for Young Researchers (2007 to 2011) and he currently has a B3 NRF rating.  



 

IRT-related research projects

Prof. Myburg leads the Forest Molecular Genetics Programme, with several genomics projects supported by the NRF, THRIP, the forestry industry (Sappi and Mondi) and the Department of Science and Technology (DST). These projects include the genomics of wood formation in eucalyptus and studies of the systems genetics of wood development, where integrative research approaches are used to link genetic variation and gene expression to complex wood property phenotypes including bioenergy metrics. 

Key Publications

Creux, NM, Ranik, M, Berger, DK, Myburg, AA (2008) Comparative analysis of orthologous cellulose synthase promoters from Arabidopsis, Populus and Eucalyptus: evidence of conserved regulatory elements in Angiosperms. New Phytol. 179: 722-737 

Mizrachi’ E, Hefer’ C, Ranik’ M, Joubert’ F, Myburg’ AA (2010) De novo assembled expressed gene catalogue of a fast-growing Eucalyptus plantation tree produced by Illumina mRNA-Seq. BMC Genomics 11: 681