This was the basic question underlying discussions held by the newly formed Africa Genetics & Biotechnology Network during a two-day 'Colloquium on Building Interdisciplinary Support for Biotechnology and the New Genetics in Africa.' The Colloquium was attended by representatives from East, South, and West Africa, that included genetic scientists, social scientists, science journalists, science communicators, public education experts, as well as other experts with experience of multidisciplinary research.

The attendees discussed: the most important ethical, legal, and social issues facing Africa in relation to biotechnology; how to enhance communications between scientists and science journalists; incentives for scientists to communicate their work publicly; and how the new network could act as focus for inter-disciplinary and public discussion of the issues arising from genetics. A newly-created website will be launched shortly providing resources for genetic scientists, journalists, and the general public wishing to understand more about the significant challenges and opportunities facing Africa in relation to genetic science and biotechnology.

The Colloquium was hosted by the AGEI along with Innogen, and was sponsored by the British Council as part of its English Africa Partnerships Programme in Higher Education.

Nice, but does it reproduce?

Millions of people turn on the ignition of their cars every day and have little idea of what it is they are setting in motion.

Nor do they really need to know, for the successful navigation of the modern car requires the simplest of co-operative actions involving the eyes, hands, feet and, of course, the brain, aided by elementary information-providing instruments in the form of the speedometer (measures wheel rotation), a revolution counter (engine rotation), temperature (engine coolant temperature) and the fuel gauge.

Many other measuring instruments are possible, but these are what carmakers think are essential for the modern driver to use. In the age of expert knowledge we have deferred to engineers the knowledge of how the car works.

A deeper understanding of the engineering of the modern car and the principles of physics and chemistry on which it is based help enormously in using and maintaining the car properly, of applying the tens to hundreds of actions in a single drive with the knowledge of how it all works and hangs together. Mechanical things are easily abused as a result of ignorance, compromising thereby their market value, reliability, durability and lifespan. There are the simple things of not, for example, in a car with manual transmission, unnecessarily slipping a clutch and prematurely wearing it down; or having a car in the right gear at the right moment in order not to either labour or exceed the top-end capacity of the internal combustion engine, compromising its efficiency and shortening its life; or using both the gears and brakes to decelerate the vehicle, saving on the brake-pad wear; and there are many other examples beyond normal maintenance of how a deeper knowledge of how things work can make you a good driver and take better care of what is after all a human piece of engineering.

The work of a male ...

Men are designed to make nests. Women are designed to cuddle-up in them. Some men do not make nests. Some women do not lie in them. Modern industrial life provides the technology to free men and women from their evolutionarily constrained roles and made nest-making an intellectual task for some and a practical task for others.

Still, our lives still go in cycles of nest-making and nesting and all of the traumas and joys that go with it. We are technologically far more sophisticated than birds in some respects but we pretty much behave like them, the men – and increasingly the women -- spending the working hours earning enough money to pay for the nest and all of the material stuff we put in them.

Environmental events trigger very specific nest-supporting events. The onset of winter drive us inside, preferably into a cacoon of warmth. In earlier times we retreated into caves kept warm by wood-kindled fires. That is why there is no greater sense of dream-like comfort than kindling the campfire, with the dog our early warning signal friend lying in proximity, on the watch.

Proud to be curly

As we head into winter, which the climatologists say will be colder and wetter than usual, I wondered about why we have so little bodily hair to keep us warm.. We wear clothes, layers of it during winter, while my dogs have thick curly fur that trap the air and therefore keep their bodily heat to themselves for longer, much like the ozone layer traps the earth’s heat.

Hair does not fossilise easily. It is very difficult therefore to establish from the fossil record when and how we lost our bodily hair. Our closest living relative the Chimpanzee may provide some clues. About 6.2 million years ago we shared a common ancestor with the Chimp and went our separate ways since.

Vitner's delight

Carole Meredith is a grape geneticist in the world of wine science. She works at the University of California at Davis, an institution noted for its excellence in agricultural science. Along with researchers from France, in 1999 Meredith found that the celebrated Chardonnay grape has modest beginnings of roughly 1,700 years ago.

The DNA technology for tracing human ancestry and our historical patterns of divergence is now well established. As all living things share the same basic DNA, Meredith used a similar technology developed for animals and human beings to confirm that Chardonnay is the offspring of one of the Pinot family of grapes believed to have originated in Burgundy 300 AD.

Meredith also found traces of a more obscure grape in Chardonnay’s ancestral pedigree. The Romans brought a variety called Gouais Blanc from Croatia and to France during the 3rd century. It is a more obscure grape variety and likely spread prolifically on the Burgundy plains. A hybrid of Pinot and Gouais Blanc emerged during the Middle Ages.

Evolutionary artifact

Richard Dawkins writes in River out of Eden about research showing ‘how the first living photocell came into being by step-by-step modification of an earlier, more general-purpose cell.’

He speaks about skin as tissue, as is the lining of the intestine, muscle and liver. Like the rest of our physiology ‘tissues can change in various ways under the influence of random mutation. Sheets of tissue can become larger or smaller in area. They can become thicker or thinner. In the special case of transparent tissues like lens tissue, they can change the refractive index (the light-bending power) of local parts of the tissue.’ [New York, Basic Books, 1995, pp.77-83]

The beginning of the human eye likely evolved from the ever-thinning skin membrane of an underwater being. J. Craig Venter, who voyaged the world like Charles Darwin did in The Beagle about 150 years ago, was surprised to find so many underwater beings having light-sensitive membranes.

Our salty tears are a reminder of an oceanic origin now long gone. The first animals with anything resembling an eye lived about 550 million years ago and that it would have taken about 364,000 years, not terribly long in evolutionary terms, for a camera-like eye as we have to have evolved from a light-sensitive patch or membrane. Many animal species see with their ears – like dolphins and bats - observes Diane Ackerman in her Natural History of the Senses – ‘but for us the world becomes most densely informative, most luscious, when we take it in through our eyes. It may be', she speculates with literary license ‘that abstract thinking evolved from our eyes’ elaborate struggle to make sense of what they saw.’[New York, Vintage, 1995, p.230].