Biotechnology in South Africa

In vitro production of alkaloids: Factors, approaches, challenges and prospects

The wide diversity of plant secondary metabolites is largely used for the production of various pharmaceutical compounds. In vitro cell tissue or organ culture has been employed as a possible alternative to produce such industrial compounds. Tissue culture techniques provide continuous, reliable, and renewable source of valuable plant pharmaceuticals and might be used for the large-scale culture of the plant cells from which these secondary metabolites can be extracted. Alkaloids are one of the most important secondary metabolites known to play a vital role in various pharmaceutical applications leading to an increased commercial importance in recent years. The tissue culture techniques may be utilized to improve their production of alkaloids via somaclonal variations and genetic transformations. The focus of this review is toward the application of different tissue culture methods/techniques employed for the in vitro production of alkaloids with a systematic approach to improve their production.

Small but tenacious: South Africa's health biotech sector

Despite a challenging business environment, entrepreneurial health biotech companies in South Africa are finding ways to succeed.

South Africa: from species cradle to genomic applications

The South African government is committed to science and technology innovation, to establishing a knowledge-based economy and to harnessing life-sciences research for health and economic development. Given the constraints and the early stage of development of the field as a whole in South Africa, we found an impressive amount of research on human genomic variation in this country. Encouragingly, South Africa is beginning to apply genomics to address local health needs, including HIV and tuberculosis (TB) infections. We document a number of initiatives in South Africa that are beginning to study genetic variation within the various local indigenous populations. Other early initiatives focus on pharmacogenetic studies, mutation characterization in individual disease genes and genome-wide association studies. Public engagement in genomic issues is spear-headed by The Africa Genome Education Institute.