News

Research visit to Rhodes University

25 May to 5 June 2008

Ms Esmare Human

The strengthening and development of local and international collaborations to improve the local skills base and to provide access to new biological techniques are just one of the several aims of the SAMI network. Several Core Expertise Groups were established based on the identification of critical malaria research areas, to build expertise and to facilitate sharing of expertise and technology between several South African institutions.

These core expertise groups include the Functional Expression of Malaria Proteins Core Expertise Group, which aims “to build capacity to express malaria proteins within SAMI, in order to support the drug discovery programme”. Researchers based at the University of Pretoria, Rhodes University, the National Health Laboratory Service, University of the Witwatersrand, and the CSIR, are involved in this Core Expertise Group. Various methods, based on the strength of each research group, are being investigated for their potential in improving the expression of Plasmodium falciparum (the parasite responsible for the majority of malaria deaths in Africa) proteins identified as potential drug targets.

As part of the collaborative studies, Ms E Human, a technician based at the laboratories of Prof AI Louw and Dr L Birkholtz, visited the laboratory of Prof G Blatch, Rhodes University, Grahamstown, in May/June 2008. Ms Human received training on the use of molecular chaperones in an expression system to ensure the correct folding of plasmodial proteins, which she will now transfer to her work and that of others at the University of Pretoria. This is just one example of how collaborative networking can be used to accelerate research outputs, and indeed the collaboration between members of this Core Expertise Group has resulted in the publication of a review of the status of heterologous expression of plasmodial proteins (Birkholtz L. et al. 2008).