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11 January 2021
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Story André Damons
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Photo Supplied
Dr Ralph Clark
The Afromontane Research Unit (ARU), the flagship research group of the University of the Free State (UFS) Qwaqwa Campus, has recently been granted R8,4 million to establish a Risk and Vulnerability Science Centre programme.
The Risk and Vulnerability Science Centre (RVSC) programme was established by the Department of Science and Innovation (DSI) as part of the Global Change Research Plan for South Africa and is funded by the DSI through the National Research Foundation (NRF). The RVSC will focus on the need to generate and disseminate knowledge about risk and vulnerability on global change challenges faced by local policy makers/ governance structures and communities in South Africa.
Invited to participate
Dr Ralph Clark, Director of the ARU, says the UFS, together with the University of Zululand and the Sol Plaatje University, has been invited to participate in Phase 2 of the RVSC programme. Dr Clark was approached by the DSI (on referral from the South African Environmental Observation Network – SAEON) in February 2020 regarding the potential for establishing a RVSC at the UFS Qwaqwa campus.
Subsequent interactions were held between the UFS and DSI, and in March 2020, the UFS formally accepted the DSI invitation. It has since been agreed that the RVSC: UFS will be hosted as a RVSC under the ARU umbrella, with dedicated personnel embedded at the UFS in this regard (internal processes and reporting) but reporting directly to the NRF regarding the RVSC.
Interest and support welcomed
Dr Clark welcomed this interest and support from the DSI-NRF, saying that the funds will further assist the UFS in growing its excellent and growing research portfolio and building more research capacity on this traditionally undergraduate-focused campus. “The RVSC will contribute to much-needed solutions in an area marked by major sustainability challenges and will assist in moving Phuthaditjhaba away from its negative apartheid history towards becoming a sustainable African mountain city,” says Dr Clark.
Oxford professor unlocks secrets of DNA
2017-03-31
From left are: Dr Cristian Capelli, Associate Professor
of Human Evolution at Oxford University;
Dr Karen Ehlers, Senior Lecturer and Prof Paul Grobler,
both from the Department of Genetics at the UFS.
Photo: Siobhan Canavan
Many people are interested to know more about their history and origins, and with the help of genetics, it is possible to provide more information about one’s roots.
During a lecture at the Department of Genetics at the University of the Free State (UFS), Dr Cristian Capelli, Associate Professor of Human Evolution at Oxford University in the UK, addressed staff members and students on the history of our species.
Reconstructing the history of human population
With his research, titled: People on the move: population structure and gene-flow in Southern Africa, Dr Capelli looks at reconstructing the history of human populations, focusing mainly on how the different human populations are related, as well as how they exchange genes.
He said this research could be of great significance to the medical field too. “Knowing what the genetic make-up of individuals is, can give us some information about their susceptibility to diseases, or how they would react to a given medicine. Therefore, this knowledge can be used to inform health-related policies.”
Combining individual histories of multiple people
To understand this research more clearly, Dr Capelli explained it in terms of DNA and how every individual receives half of their DNA from their mother and half from their father just as their parents had received theirs from their parents. And so it goes from generation after generation. Each individual stores a part of their ancestors’ DNA which makes up the individual genetic history of each person.
“If we combine these individual histories by looking at the DNA of multiple people, we can identify the occurrences that are shared across individuals and therefore reconstruct the history of a population, and in the same way on a larger scale, the history of our own species, homo sapiens.