In 1998, the ordinarily placid world of biology and genetics was torn apart when a gauntlet was thrown down.

In 1990, a genial project was announced by James Watson, the co-discovered of DNA and head of the National Centre for Human Genome Research at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the United States.  The purpose would be, over a period of 15 years, to extract the complete genome of human beings.

It was a big project and received support and finding from big governments.  As with all such projects, it would be difficult to measure exactly how rapidly such a project could be run and at what cost. 

You will now be able to follow the route that Charles Darwin took when he visited Cape Town aboard the HMS Beagle.

In 1836 Charles Darwin spent 18 days in and around Cape Town.  In 2009, the year that we are celebrating his Bicentennial, the importance of his visit to the Cape aboard the HMS Beagle is being reassessed.  The actual route he followed has been plotted and forms what is now designated as the Darwin Trail.

The HMS Beagle anchored in Simon’s Bay on 31 May 1836 and the small settlement did not impress Darwin.  ‘The little town of Simon’s Bay offers but a cheerless aspect to the stranger’ he recorded in his diary.  On 1 May he set off through Constantia to Wynberg, Claremont, Observatory to Cape Town.

Side one of the Darwin Trail takes you along this route with information on what Darwin saw and observed.  There are also some suggestions on what he mught add to his itinerary if he were visiting the Cape today.

His trip into the hinterland is recorded on side two.  You can follow the path he took, accompanied by an English speaking Khoi groom.  They travelled to Paarl to visit the granite outcropping – Paarl rock.  From there they journeyed along the Burg River to Franschhoek.  They crossed Franschhoek Pass and over-nighted at the Toll House on the Eastern side of the pass.  There was another stop over at Houwhoek before journeying back over the Sir Lowry Cole’s Pass, across the Cape Flats and back to the city.    

The Darwin Trail provides a wonderful journey through some amazing landscapes and to a range of significant sites and sights.  It also provides an opportunity for re-assessing what Darwin’s visit contributed to his work and ultimately to his major contribution to modern science. 

The printed Darwin Trail will be available from Cape Town Tourism from end August 2009 as well as on this website.

South Africa must build its vaccine production capacity if it wants to be prepared for influenza pandemics such as the current "swine flu" outbreak, a think-tank of virologists heard in Cape Town yesterday. This requires long-term planning, and private-public partnership.

The group, hosted by the African Genome Education Institution, convened to discuss local vaccine production, and how to deal with viral outbreaks in South Africa.

"Well over 100 000 cases (of swine flu) have been detected worldwide. South Africa had 125 cases by Monday this week," said Prof Barry Schoub, from the National Institute for Communicable Diseases, "fortunately they’ve all been relatively mild cases." However this figure may be the "tip of the iceberg" since many cases have probably gone unrecorded.

‘It is awe-inspiring to meet him’ the great science Nobel Laureate David Baltimore wrote of Nelson Mandela, as he is ‘one of the world’s few unalloyed heroes’. I had taken Baltimore to meet Madiba as the third speaker in the annual Nelson Mandela Science Lecture, a joint project of the Nelson Mandela Foundation and the Africa Genome Education Institute. His lecture was on the subject of viruses and it is one of the most lucid accounts on the subject.

Baltimore explained to Madiba that, in addition to giving the lecture, he was in South Africa to attend a meeting of the recipients of Bill Gates’ grand challenge grants, big money to develop what is known as a gene therapy approach to AIDS. We spoke some about HIV but, Baltimore records, Madiba surprisingly to him ‘had no comments on the present Government’s policies.’

SWINE FLU - THE 2009 PANDEMIC: A PARADIGM OF BIOLOGICAL EVOLUTION IN ACTION

Professor Barry Schoub will deliver the next Darwin Lecture. As Executive Director for the National Institute for Communicable Diseases he has been in the news recently commenting on the formal declaration of the first pandemic of influenza in this country - the H1N1 virus, commonly called Swine Flu.  The influenza virus, one of the most enigmatic of all human viruses, is a perfect model of real-time evolutionary adaptation to selective pressures and as part of the bicentenary of the birth of Charles Darwin lecture series, he looks at the future course of this pandemic by reviewing past pandemics which have some common features but also some very distinctive differences.

Thursday 23 July

Time:    5.30 for 6pm

Venue: New Learning Centre, Anatomy Building, Health Sciences Campus, University of Cape Town, Anzio Road, Observatory

RSVP:   This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it  021 557 0246

In one of my first immunology classes at university, we played a game called Pandemic.

We were each given two sterile Petri dishes filled with a standard agar growth medium, and a sterile and very sticky piece of toffee. We washed our hands thoroughly and then, in one hand, squeezed the toffee until our hands were gooey.

Each person then, one by one, shook hands with one other person. After the first round of hand-shaking, we swabbed our sticky hand and plated it onto the first agarose gel. Then we did a second round of hand-shaking, and plated again.

One toffee, out of the whole class, had been covered in a marker bacterium. The purpose of the experiment was to demonstrate how rapidly, through simple interpersonal contact, a disease could spread.