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18 July 2024 | Story VALENTINO NDABA | Photo SUPPLIED
Nelson Mandela Month 2024
Celebrating #UFSMandelaMonth2024: Building a brighter future through community and care.

Mandela Month at the University of the Free State (UFS) is a time to honour Nelson Mandela's legacy through reflection, action, and community engagement. Guided by Vision 130, UFS aims to make a profound societal impact by fostering sustainable relationships and supporting societal development.

Community Engagement Indaba

As South Africa celebrates Mandela Month, the Directorate of Community Engagement hosted the Community Engagement Indaba at the Bloemfontein Campus from 10-11 July 2024. This year's theme was “Building Self-reliance, Self-sufficiency, and Self-sustainable Livelihoods for Entrepreneurship”. 

The Indaba was a vibrant platform for staff, students, and community members to exchange knowledge and skills on how to implement the objectives of our Engaged Scholarship strategy and policy.

This was an opportunity to engage in education, training, and networking with experts from various disciplines. Topics of discussion included:

• Self-sufficiency, self-reliance, and self-sustainable living
• Contextualising curriculum to respond to societal impact
• Entrepreneurship
• Personal development and transformation
• Subsistence farming
• Growing and manufacturing of cannabis products
• Nutrition and health, food security

Helping future educators dress for success

Mandela said: “Education is the most powerful weapon you can use to change the world.” This Mandela Month, the Teaching Practice Directorate supported fourth-year and Postgraduate Certificate in Education (PGCE) students who lack professional clothes for their teaching practice, impacting their confidence and hampering their first impressions.

The Faculty of Education of the Qwaqwa Campus is conducted a donation drive for formal clothing and workwear to help our UFS-produced aspiring educators enter the world of work with enthusiasm and confidence.

Soup kitchen at HCYCC

On Mandela Day, the Faculty of Theology set up a soup kitchen at the Heidedal Children and Youth Care Centre. This event is an initiative aimed at providing nutritious meals to children and youth, fostering community engagement.

It’s in your hands: Food Environment Programme

The ongoing Food Environment Programme tackles student food insecurity, aiming to create a healthy food environment. Says Annelize Visagie from the Food Environment Office: “The Food Environment Programme is designed to address the many dimensions of the food environment; assisting students who suffer from food insecurity and hunger is part of the overall programme. The University of the Free State has previously identified student food insecurity and hunger as a significant problem, with as many as 59% of students identified as not knowing where their next meal will come from. In addition, they have recognised that food insecurity has added stress to students’ lives which has a negative impact on their studies.”

The programmme includes the following initiatives:

No Student Hungry Programme: Provides one balanced meal per day.
• Food Parcel Programme: Distributes food parcels with non-perishable items.
• Community Gardens: Enhances campus food security in collaboration with Kovsie ACT and the Centre for Sustainable Agriculture.

Eat&Succeed: Provides valuable insights, practical tips on making affordable and nutritious meals.

Click to view documentClick on the email to donate to these initiatives or call +27 51 401 3258.

Join us in making a difference and showing our commitment to care as we celebrate Mandela Month by at the UFS. Together, we can honour Nelson Mandela’s legacy of service and societal development. Every Day is Mandela Day at UFS.

News Archive

UFS study on cell development in top international science journal
2008-09-16

A study from the University of the Free State (UFS) on how the change in the packaging of DNA with cell development influenced the expression of genes, will be published in this week’s early edition of the prestigious international, peer-reviewed science journal, the Proceeding of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA (PNAS).

The PNAS journal has an impact factor of 10, which means that studies published in the journal are, on average, referred to by ten other scientific studies in a two year period. The South African Journal of Science, by comparison, has an impact factor of 0.7.

The UFS study, funded by the Wellcome Trust and the National Research Foundation (NRF), looked at how the change in the packaging of DNA with cell development influenced the expression of genes. It is very relevant to research on stem cells, an area of medicine that studies the possible use of undifferentiated cells to replace damaged tissue.

Prof. Hugh Patterton, of the Department of Microbial, Biochemical and Food Biotechnology at the UFS, who led the study, said: "We are extremely proud of this study. It was conceived in South Africa, it was performed in South Africa, the data were analysed in South Africa, and it was published from South Africa."

When a gene is expressed, the information encoded in the gene is used to manufacture a specific protein. In eukaryotes, which include humans, there is approximately 1m of DNA, containing the genes, in every cell. This length of DNA has to fit into a cell nucleus with a diameter of only about 10 micrometer. In order to fit the DNA into such a small volume, eukaryotic cells wrap their DNA onto successive protein balls, termed nucleosomes. Strings of nucleosomes, resembling a bead of pearls, is folded into a helix to form a chromatin fiber. The study from the UFS investigated how the binding of a specific protein, termed a linker histone, that binds to the length of DNA between nucleosomes, influenced the formation of the chromatin fiber and also the activity of genes.

"We found that the linker histone bound to chromatin in yeast, which we use as a model eukaryote, under conditions where virtually all the genes in the organism were inactive. It was widely believed that the binding of the linker histone caused the inactivation of genes. We studied the relationship between the amount of linker histone bound in the vicinity of each gene and the expression of that gene for all the genes in yeast, using genomic techniques. We made the surprising discovery that even through the linker histone preferentially bound to genes under conditions where the genes were shut off, this inactivation of genes was not caused by the binding of the linker histone and folding of the chromatin,” said Prof. Patterton.

He said: “Instead our data strongly suggested that the observed anti-correlation was due to the movement of enzymes along the DNA molecule, involved in processing the information in genes for the eventual manufacture of proteins. This movement of enzymes displaced the linker histones from the DNA. This finding now requires a rethink on aspects of how packaging of DNA influences gene activity."

Prof. Patterton said that his research group, using the Facility for Genomics and Proteomics as well as the Bioinformatics Node at the UFS, was currently busy with follow-up studies to understand how other proteins in nucleosomes affected the activities of genes, as well as with projects to understand how chemicals found in red wine and in green tea extended lifespan. "We are certainly having a marvelous time trying to understand the fundamental mechanisms of life, and the UFS is an exciting place to be if one was interested in studying life at the level of molecules," he said.


Media Release
Issued by: Lacea Loader
Assistant Director: Media Liaison
Tel: 051 401 2584
Cell: 083 645 2454
E-mail: loaderl.stg@ufs.ac.za  
18 September 2008
 

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