Silas Villas-Boas

Research Interests;

Methods in microbial metabolomics
Bioactive compounds from NZ microbes
Effect of sonic vibration on yeast metabolism
Bioconversion of food waste products

Dr. Silas Villas-Boas is an Associate Professor at the School of Biological Sciences, The University of Auckland, with a scientific career focused primarily on microbial physiology, metabolomics and biodiscovery of bioactive metabolites. Since 2001, Dr. Villas-Boas has established international expertise in microbial metabolomics, with over 55 scientific publications in peer-reviewed journals, 9 book chapters, and 3 patents registered.

Dr Villas-Boas has contributed and co-edited the first international text-book on metabolome analysis published by John Wiley & Sons (2007) and he co-edited the first book on Microbial Metabolomics published by CABI Publishing (2012), Oxfordshire, UK. Dr Villas-Boas is a member of the editorial board of several scientific journals including Science Reviews (Springer), Metabolites(MDPI) and Computational and Structural Biotechnology Journal (International Chemical Biology Society). Since 2010 Dr Villas-Boas has been working in close collaboration with Biotelliga Limited in the biodiscovery of novel antifungal compounds produced by New Zealand isolated microorganisms. See Dr Villas-Bôas’ Curriculum Vitae.

Main impact of Dr. Villas-Bôas research to date:

Discovered a novel natural antifungal molecule produced by a New Zealand mould that has been licensed to Biotelliga Limited for commercialisation
Demonstrated that infrasonic vibration affects the metabolism of yeast cells
Demonstrated that menaquinones play important role in bacterial oxidative response
Developed a high-throughput method for metabolite analysis using Gas chromatography mass spectrometry (GC-MS)
Discovered a new metabolic pathway used by Saccharomyces cerevisiae to utilise glycine as nitrogen source
Described and reported the first lignocellulolytic yeast
Developed and optimised a sequential fermentation process to convert fruit waste from apple industry into a nutritionally enriched substrate for animal/human consumption