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Did first humans originate from Afican or Middle East?

Professor Avi Gopher from the Institute of Archeology of Tel Aviv University holds an ancient tooth that was found at an archeological site near Rosh Haain, Central Israel
Professor Avi Gopher from the Institute of Archeology of Tel Aviv University holds an ancient tooth that was found at an archeological site near Rosh Haain, Central Israel

A news scientific discovery may force libraries to burn some old biology books on the evolution of modern man from their shelves. Scientists have just discovery a 400,000-year-old human remains which raises a lot of questions.

Previously,  researchers believed that homo sapiens, which are the direct descendants of modern man, evolved in Africa about 200,000 years ago and gradually migrated north, through the Middle East, to Europe and Asia.

The new discovery, which came out from a study by an Israeli university researchers could compel scientists to revise the earlier theories.

Archeologists from Tel Aviv University say eight human-like teeth found in the Qesem cave near Rosh Ha’Ayin – 10 miles from Israel’s international airport – are 400,000 years old, from the Middle Pleistocene Age, making them the earliest remains of homo sapiens yet discovered anywhere in the world.

The size and shape of the teeth are very similar to those of modern man. Until now, the earliest examples found were in Africa, dating back only 200,000 years.

The report which is published in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, suggest that modern man did not originate in Africa as previously believed, but in the Middle East.

The teeth is the part of the human skeleton that survive the longest.

The researchers hope to make more discoveries that would shed further light on human evolution in prehistoric times.
In conclusion, the “Out of Africa” theory will be subjected to strong debate in the days and years ahead.

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Poor World Cup final sums up bad year for soccer

Reuters

From the earliest days of January to the last days of December, this was a year of tragedy, scandal and controversy for the world’s most popular sport. Even the first World Cup finals in Africa, held in South Africa in the southern hemisphere’s winter months of June and July, left a bitter-sweet memory, rather than a golden one to cherish for generations.

As well as a poor World Cup, soccer suffered tragedy when gunmen attacked the Togo team at the Africa Cup of Nations in Angola at the start of the year.

There was scandal at the pinnacle of the game with FIFA suspending two of its executive committee members after allegations that they were prepared to sell their votes to decide the hosts of the 2018 and 2022 World Cups.

FIFA’s controversial decision to award the 2022 finals to Qatar, despite fears from FIFA’s own inspectors about playing in the Arabian summer heat, also made headlines around the world.

While there were great on-field triumphs, including Inter Milan becoming European champions for the first time since 1965 and the continuing brilliant form of Lionel Messi at Barcelona, some top clubs, afflicted by poor financial management, struggled to cope with debts.

The World Cup represented a success for South Africa which organised a safe, largely crime-free tournament with enthusiastic crowds and a unique atmosphere, but it had few memorable matches and a truly awful final.

The game, which ended in a deserved 1-0 win for Spain over a cynical Netherlands side thanks to Andres Iniesta’s winner four minutes before the end of extra time, was a spiteful affair of 13 yellow cards and a sending-off for Dutchman Johnny Heitinga.

A lack of goals, bitterly cold weather at the first winter World Cup in 32 years and a shortage of stand-out performances throughout, all contributed to the sense of anti-climax.

The unpredictable flight of the Jabulani ball may have been one factor; others were the lack of goals and a prevalence of draws in the opening round.

That trend concerns FIFA so much it has convened a task force to try to improve matters for the 2014 finals in Brazil.

The game’s biggest names failed to impress in South Africa. Perhaps the players were tired after long, tough European seasons but Messi, Kaka, Fernando Torres and Wayne Rooney did not score a goal between them, while Didier Drogba and Cristiano Ronaldo scored only one goal each.

Italy’s reign as world champions ended in first-round elimination while France, runners-up four years earlier, imploded with a player revolt over the expulsion of Nicolas Anelka and they went home, like Italy, without winning a match.

France was convulsed by the antics of its team, sparking a national inquiry which ended with some players receiving bans and unpopular coach Raymond Domenech losing his job.

His replacement Laurent Blanc suspended all 23 World Cup squad members for his first match in charge while Anelka’s 18-match ban effectively ended his international career.

African teams also disappointed with five of the six eliminated in the group stage, including South Africa, the first host team to fail to reach the knockout rounds.

While the World Cup was disappointing, at least it avoided much of the crime many in the West had predicted, especially after the attack on the Togo team in January when a bus carrying the squad came under gunfire in the Angolan separatist enclave of Cabinda. A bus driver, the team’s assistant manager and a media officer died.

The Togo squad returned home and withdrew from the tournament which continued without them and was eventually won by Egypt.

FIFA scandal

At the end of the year FIFA’s decision to name the hosts for the 2018 and 2022 World Cup finals on the same day effectively led to the governing body’s biggest scandal since it came into existence 106 years ago.

Following allegations by the Sunday Times newspaper in London that two FIFA executives were prepared to sell their votes for cash, FIFA were forced to investigate and somewhat reluctantly suspended and fined six officials, two of them from the decision-making executive committee.

Allegations of collusion among voting committee members continued to dominate headlines after FIFA awarded the 2018 finals to Russia and, more surprisingly, the 2022 finals to Qatar, the tiny Arab country of 1.6 million people where summer temperatures can reach 50 degrees Celsius.

Since those decisions were taken on Dec. 2, FIFA president Sepp Blatter has fiercely defended them, saying taking the World Cup to new territories such as eastern Europe and the Middle East made perfect sense and was part of FIFA’s gift in developing the game around the world.

Much of the world’s attention, as always, was focused on UEFA’s Champions League which ended in triumph for Jose Mourinho who became only the third man to win the European Cup with two different clubs when his Inter Milan beat Bayern Munich 2-0 in the final in Madrid in May.

It was Inter’s first continental triumph for 45 years and followed an Italian Cup and League double, before Mourinho left for Real Madrid. They added the Club World Cup to their honours this month — their fifth trophy of the year.

Although Messi had a poor World Cup he inspired Barcelona to the Spanish title, while Atletico Madrid brought more success to Spain by beating unlikely finalists Fulham in the Europa Cup final in Hamburg.

There were also Cup and League doubles for Chelsea in England and Bayern Munich in Germany.

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A young female is unsuccessful without a man in Nigeria?

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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

“…I am infuriated by the assumption that to be youngish and female means you are unable to earn your own living without a man” – Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

A humid night two years ago, sitting beside a male friend in his car, and I roll down my window to tip a young man, one of the thousands of unemployed young men in Lagos who hang around, humorous and resourceful, and help you park your car with the expectation of a tip. I brought the money from my bag. He took it with a grateful smile. Then he looked at my friend and said, “Thank you, sir!”

This is what it is to be youngish (early thirties) and female in urban Nigeria. You are driving and a policeman stops you and either he is leering and saying “fine aunty, I will marry you,” or he is sneering, with a taunt in his demeanour and the question so heavy in the air that it need not be asked: “which man bought this car for you and what did you have to do to get him to?” You are reduced to two options; to play angry and tough and to thereby offend his masculinity and have him keep you parked by the roadside, demanding document after document. Or to play the Young Simpering Female and massage his masculinity, a masculinity already fragile from poor pay and various other indignities of the Nigerian state. I am infuriated by these options. I am infuriated by the assumption that to be youngish and female means you are unable to earn your own living without a man. And yet. Sometimes I have taken on the simpering and smiling, because I am late or I am hot or I am simply not dedicated enough to my feminist principle.

I have a friend who is, on the surface, a cliché. An aspirational cliché. She has a beautiful face, two degrees from an American Ivy League college, a handsome husband with a similar educational pedigree and two children who started to read at the age of two; she is always at the top of Nigerian women achievers lists in magazines; has worked, in the past 10 years, in consulting, hedge funds and non-governmental organisations; mentors young girls on how to succeed in a male-dominated world; recites statistics about anything from trade deficits to export revenue. And yet.

One day she told me she had stopped giving interviews because her husband did not like her photo in the newspaper, and she had also decided to take her husband’s surname because it upset him that she continued to use hers professionally. Expressions such as “honour him” and “for peace in my marriage” tumbled out of her mouth, forming what I thought of as a smouldering log of self-conquest.

Another friend is very attractive, very educated, sits on boards of companies and does the sort of management work that is Greek to me. She is single. She is a few years older than I am but looks much younger. The first board meeting she attended, a man asked her, after being introduced, “So whose wife or daughter are you?” Because to him, it was the only way she would be on that board. She was, it turned out, a chief executive. And yet. She lives in a city where her friends dream not of becoming the CEO but of marrying the CEO, a city where her singleness is seen as an affront, where marriage carries more social and political cachet than it should.

Another friend is a talented writer, a forthright woman who makes people nervous when she speaks bluntly about sex, a woman who describes herself as a feminist, and who talks a lot about gender equality and changing the system. And yet. She earns more than her husband does but once told me that he had to pay the rent, always, because it was the man’s duty to do so. “Even if he is broke and I have money, he will have to go and borrow and pay the rent.” She paused, rolling this contradiction around her tongue, and then she added, “Maybe it is because of our culture. It is what they taught us.”

There is, of course, always that “they”. Two years ago, we were slumped on sofas in his Lagos living room, my brother-in-law and I, talking about politics as we usually did.

“I think I’ll run for governor in a few years,” I said in the musing manner of a person who only half-means what they say.

“You would never be governor,” he said promptly. “You could be a senator but not governor. They won’t let a woman be governor.”

What he meant was that a governor had too much power, and was in control of too much money, none of which could be left to a woman by that invisible “they”. And yet. I realise that 15 years ago he would not have said, “you could be a senator.” Civilian rule brought greater participation of women in politics and the most popular and most effective ministers in the past 10 years have been women. In the next decade, my brother-in-law could be proved wrong. In the next three decades, he will certainly be proved wrong. But she would have to be married, the woman who would be governor.

My first novel is on the West African secondary school curriculum. My second novel is taught in universities. One question I am almost always certain of getting during media interviews is a variation of this: we appreciate the work you are doing and your novels are important but when are you getting married? I refuse to accept that the institution of marriage is what gives me my true value, and I refuse to come across as silly or coy or both. The balance is a precarious one.

“Would you ask that question to a male writer my age?” I once asked a journalist in Lagos.

“No,” he said, looking at me as though I were foolish. “But you are not a man.”
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The ‘long walk’ to equality for African women

L. Muthoni Wanyeki

Africa’s political independence was accompanied by a common clarion call to eradicate poverty, illiteracy and disease. Fifty years after the end of colonial, the question is: To what extent has the promise of that call has been realized for African women? There is no doubt that African women’s “long walk to freedom” has yielded some results, however painfully and slowly.

 

The African Union (AU) now has a legally binding Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa. The protocol spells out clearly women’s rights to equality and non-discrimination in a number of areas. It has been ratified by a growing number of African states, can be used in civil law proceedings and is being codified into domestic common law. The AU has also issued a Declaration on Gender Equality in Africa, under which member states are supposed to regularly report on progress.

The protocol and declaration both reflect and reinforce developments at the national level. Many African states have moved to enhance constitutional protections for African women — particularly on women’s rights to citizenship and equality. And the last two decades have seen the emergence of legislation to address violence against women, including sexual violence.

Political representation

These normative developments have been accompanied by improvements in African women’s political representation. The AU adopted, from its inception, a 50 per cent standard for women’s representation, reflected in the composition of its Commission.

Again, this standard drew from and reinforces efforts to enhance women’s representation at the national level. South Africa, Tanzania and Uganda have reached the 30 per cent benchmark for their legislatures. Rwanda has gone further — with 50 per cent representation, one of the best in the world. A few countries, including Nigeria, have seen women assume non-traditional ministerial portfolios, in defence and finance, for example. And Liberia has made history (“herstory”) by becoming the first African country to elect into office a female head of state, Ellen Sirleaf-Johnson.

Progress is evident, particularly in countries that have electoral systems based on or incorporating proportional representation. However, enhanced women’s representation has been harder to achieve in first-past-the-post electoral systems.

But even where there has been progress, the question is whether increased representation of women is catalyzing action by the executives and legislatures in favour of gender equality.

Education, poverty, health

Gains are most evident in African women’s education. Girls and boys are now at par with respect to primary level education. Efforts to get girls into school were accompanied by efforts to keep them in school and to promote role models by developing gender-responsive curricula. Gender gaps are also narrowing in secondary education. The real challenge now lies at the university level, both in the enrolment figures and in the areas of focus to benefit young African women.

Gains for women are harder to see in that call’s “poverty” element, however. It is true that since independence investments in micro-credit and micro-enterprises for women have improved women’s individual livelihoods — and therefore that of their families as well.

Yet there was a critique of such investments, especially in the decade of the 1980s when governments withdrew from social service delivery as a result of structural adjustment programmes. In that context, such investments essentially enabled redistribution among the impoverished, rather than at a macro-level, from the enriched to the impoverished.

The end of that era thus saw a new focus on gender budgeting: looking at where national budget allocations and expenditures could enhance women’s status in the economy. Unsurprisingly, this approach has led African governments back towards public investments in social services.

It is now agreed, for example, the benchmark for public investments in health in Africa is 15 per cent. The African women’s movement has called in particular for this to be directed towards reproductive and sexual health and rights. That is of critical concern to women given the impact of HIV/AIDS, maternal mortality and violence against women, particularly in conflict areas. It is also of concern since African women’s continued lack autonomy and choice over reproduction and sexuality lie at the heart of all pandemics.

Where next?

Where to over the next 50 years then? In light of the experience so far, politically the African women’s movement will be focusing not just on political representation, but the meaning of that representation for advancing gender equality and women’s human rights. And given recent retreats in Africa (such as the rise of the constitutional “coup” and “negotiated democracy”), it will also be focusing on democracy, peace and security more broadly, that is, the nature of the political system itself and not just getting into that system.

Economically, women will continue to focus on the macro-level, but in a deeper sense. What has emerged from gender budgeting efforts is the need to actually track budgetary expenditures, not just being informed about allocations. The aim must be to ensure that Africa’s growth will have real meaning for enhancing African women’s economic livelihoods.

Finally, the women’s movement will be focusing on reproductive and sexual health and rights. The battle over choice (including over gender identity and sexual orientation) is now an open one in many African countries. It is no longer couched politely in demographic or health terms.

African women’s “long walk to freedom” has only just begun.

L. Muthoni Wanyeki is a political scientist who works on development communications, gender and human rights and has published in these fields. She currently works as the Executive Director of the Kenya Human Rights Commission (KHRC), a national, non-governmental organisation that works to promote all human rights of all Kenyans through research and advocacy as well as civic action
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What Americans percieve as Africa’s serious problems, Gallup poll

Six in 10 say malaria a very serious problem in Africa

A recent Gallup survey finds that roughly 6 in 10 Americans say malaria is a very serious problem in Africa right now, but they are much more likely to view HIV or AIDS and poor nutrition as very serious problems for that continent. When asked more broadly about the seriousness of malaria worldwide, significantly fewer Americans, only about 3 in 10, consider it a very serious problem, ranking it at the bottom of a list of global health conditions that includes HIV or AIDS, cancer, poor nutrition, and tuberculosis. Democrats are more likely than Republicans to say malaria is a serious health problem in both Africa and around the world more generally.

Overall Results

HIV or AIDS and poor nutrition are, by far, perceived as the most serious health conditions in Africa right now, of the five tested in the poll. Nearly all Americans, 96%, say that HIV or AIDS is a very serious problem in Africa, and 88% say poor nutrition is a very serious problem. A smaller percentage of Americans, but still a majority, say malaria (62%) and tuberculosis (53%) are serious problems facing that continent. Only 30% say cancer is a serious problem in Africa.

On a worldwide basis, at least 8 in 10 Americans say HIV or AIDS, cancer, and poor nutrition are very serious problems around the world right now. Americans perceive tuberculosis and malaria to be less serious problems, with only 31% saying tuberculosis and 28% saying malaria are very serious problems in the world.

The public is almost three times more likely to say cancer is a more serious problem around the world (87%) than it is in Africa (30%). Conversely, Americans perceive malaria (62% vs. 28%) and tuberculosis (53% vs. 31%) to be much more of a problem in Africa than in other parts of the world. Americans are equally likely to say AIDS and poor nutrition are serious problems in the world and in Africa.

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Sudan vote a test for all Africa

On January 9, the people of south Sudan will vote in a referendum to decide whether they will remain part of a united Sudan or form a new independent state
On January 9, the people of south Sudan will vote in a referendum to decide whether they will remain part of a united Sudan or form a new independent state
Thabo Mbeki

The entire continent is watching to see if diverse communities can live in peaceful mutual respect.

IT HAS been said, correctly, that Sudan is a microcosm of Africa. For this reason, the entire continent will follow events in Sudan over the next few months with the greatest interest.

On January 9, the people of south Sudan will vote in a referendum to decide whether they will remain part of a united Sudan or form a new independent state. If they choose the latter option, the new state will come into being in July.

During the same period, even as Sudan is addressing the issue of its north-south relations, it will also have to arrive at a comprehensive agreement to end the conflict in Darfur.

During its nearly 55 years of independence, Sudan has experienced a succession of violent conflicts, in the south, the west (Darfur) and the east. It is commonly accepted that what lay at the root of these conflicts was the failure of independent Sudan – one of Africa’s most racially, ethnically, religiously and culturally diverse countries – to construct a polity informed by the principle and practice of unity in diversity.

This challenge faces almost all African countries as they seek to construct stable and peaceful societies. Nearly all civil wars and other violent conflicts in post-colonial Africa have occurred because of the failure to manage properly the diversity that characterises these countries.

These conflicts have taught Africa that, in order to contain the centrifugal pressures that encourage fragmentation within our relatively new states, a conscious effort must be made to nurture and entrench national unity, which must include democratic practices. Conflict has also communicated the unequivocal message that unity cannot be secured and maintained by force alone.

Rather, it is only by respecting our diversity – ensuring that each social group enjoys a shared sense of belonging rather than feeling marginalised and excluded – that the state’s unity and peace can be guaranteed.

Sudan has learnt these lessons through harsh practical experience, including war.

As long ago as 1975, Gafaar al-Nimeiry, Sudan’s military head of state, stated with great prescience what Sudan and Africa needed to do to achieve peace and stability. “Unity based on diversity has become the essence and the raison d’etre of the political and national entity of many an emerging African country today. We take pride in that the Sudan of the Revolution has become the exemplary essence of this new hope. The Sudan is the biggest country in Africa. It lies in its heart and at its crossroads. Its extensive territory borders [nine] African countries. Common frontiers mean common ethnic origins, common cultures and shared ways of life and environmental conditions. Trouble in the Sudan would, by necessity, spill over its frontiers, and vice versa. A turbulent and unstable Sudan would not therefore be a catalyst of peace and stability in Africa, and vice versa.”

Unfortunately, failure to implement policies based on genuine respect for this perspective plunged Sudan into its second costly north-south war, fuelled the violent conflicts in western and eastern Sudan, and created the possibility of the south’s secession. Given this history, it is clear that the governments of Sudan and south Sudan, as well as the overwhelming majority of the Sudanese people, have had enough of war and passionately desire peace.

The processes in which the Sudanese parties are currently engaged – the preparations for the south Sudan referendum, negotiations on post-referendum arrangements, and the search for a negotiated settlement in Darfur – are all informed by this desire for peace. For this reason, Africa is following Sudan’s evolution with intense interest – and is eager to see this country “at the heart and crossroads of Africa” give substance to al-Nimeiry’s vision.

But, regardless of the outcome of the south Sudan referendum, the impending developments in Sudan will result in important changes to the structure of the Sudanese state. In this context, the Sudanese parties – north and south – have accepted the important principle of establishing “two viable states” if the south secedes.

As happens during periods of major and rapid change, the country will experience social tension, uncertainty and unease. Africa is keen that the Sudanese leadership co-operate effectively to manage this delicate situation, in the interest of the continent as a whole. This requires that Sudan’s various leadership collectives have sufficient strength and cohesion to bring their constituencies into the settlement, and therefore that no one, from near or afar, does anything to weaken any of these collectives.

It is in Africa’s interest to see Sudan’s people living together in peace and co-operating with one another for their mutual benefit – fully respecting one another’s diverse but not mutually exclusive interests, whether they live in one country or two. A Sudan that truly embodied “the exemplary essence” of respect for diversity of which al-Nimeiry spoke would serve as a catalyst for peace and stability on our continent.

It is to be hoped that the sustained and enormous international focus on Sudan has as its objective providing the necessary support to the Sudanese people to help them achieve this goal, including building two viable states, as may be necessary.

Thabo Mbeki, a former president of South Africa, is chairman of the African Union High Level Implementation Panel for Sudan.

Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2010.

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“White” Christmas in Zambia

By Wesley Ngwenya, Lusaka Times

Last week, I was having a chat with a friend of mine about Christmas and how we felt that it was becoming more and more Western. Apparently, my friend’s five year old daughter was following our conversation. She simply said, “Jesus is white!” We were both stunned at this insight and looked at each other not knowing how to respond. I broke the silence and engaged the girl in conversation. She said she has seen Jesus on television and on pictures and he is white. “How about God, what color is He?” I inquired. “He is also white like Jesus”, she responded.

I couldn’t blame the little girl for the white images of Jesus or God that she had after all I grew up with similar images myself. Later that week, I decided to do a random survey of adults and what color they thought Jesus was. Most thought he was white, a few got philosophical or theological and said he had no color and no one ever said he was black.

During this Christmas season, I am shocked at how Christmas has turned out to be a “White Christmas” with everything Western. Shops are filled with Christmas gifts and decorations of white santa, snowflakes, Christmas trees—the kinds you find in North Dakota, red and green lights and even a nativity scene. All these products are made and imported from China where they do not celebrate the holiday at all.

I think slowly, Christmas has lost its meaning in Zambia. Back in the day, we celebrated Christmas by having uncles, cousins, friends and anyone to come and eat and drink. Our parents played the tunes of Smokey Haangala or Paul Ngozi and we danced to them. Yes, we knew about the “White” Jesus but we never really focused so much on him or had all kinds of white pictures in our living rooms.

Today, Christians have completely been transformed where we fill our homes with all kinds of decorations we do not understand. If Jesus is white maybe we have embraced a wrong religion for ourselves. We need to keep searching for the ideal black religion or better return to the good old African religion.

When I was talking to one person on the same subject they said, “Well, God used the white people to bring this religion to us because we were lost. That is why we follow their religion.” I asked him if it had ever occurred to him that perhaps our religion wasn’t that bad at all. Or why was it not the black people who were enlightened so as to spread the good news to the white folks with a black Jesus uh? I am sure the white folks would love that. Then they would have to decorate a mango tree for a Christmas tree, fun isn’t it?—with all the yellow, green and red mangoes acting as lights.

Now I am not anti-Christian myself. I am a God fearing, God loving Zambian. My only concern is that Christianity is still “too foreign” and we do not fully understand it. That is why we continue to fight in its name. That is why politicians take advantage of us in its name. That is why we remain poor in its name. And I think that is why we embrace it too—because we are poor and believe that someday God will change things for us. Maybe we need to change things for ourselves. Like my grandmother said when she visited Minnesota, “God built America first with all its road, bridges, airports and skyscrapers but when He got to Zambia He had no more money.” Now that can only be a “white god” who can do that right? Because a black one will do the exact opposite.

Where is our God this Christmas? Have our images about Him or His Son been transformed completely to think of Him as someone hanging in the sky above Western countries? Do we think of Jesus as a white man with long blonde hair, a goatee, and wearing a white rob? Whatever, your image of God or Jesus is , I hope this brings peace to you during this season. I hope it is time to celebrate with your family and friends. I hope it is time to reflect and appreciate how far you have come. And I hope it is time to look forward to more great things in the year to come. Make, yourself happy this Christmas. Happy Christmas, Happy Kwanza and a winning 2011.

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Ingestion of ‘modified’ starch could be a new malaria vaccine strategy

Electron microscope image showing starch (white shell) containing a peptide of Plasmodium (black dots of gold particles) coupled with the GBSS of the green algae Chlamydomona. Credit:Stan Tomavo, CNRS

There is no efficient vaccine against malaria, although nasal and oral vaccination seems to be the most promising and suitable solution in countries where the parasite Plasmodium, which causes the disease, is rife. Researchers from two laboratories in northern France have successfully vaccinated and protected mice by feeding them starch derived from green algae and genetically modified to carry vaccine proteins. These encouraging results, which make it possible to envisage a simple and safe vaccination for children in countries at risk, are available online, on the scientific journal PloS One’s website.

According to the WHO, malaria affects approximately 300 to 500 million people worldwide and kills one million each year, mostly young children. Insecticide-resistant carrying the disease and multi-drug resistant are on the increase. In this context, the development of a vaccine that alleviates symptoms and reduces mortality would be a valuable new tool in the fight against malaria. Researchers aim to test the efficacy of vaccine candidates among proteins that allow the parasite to penetrate host cells and infect them, in order to devise the best strategy for vaccine delivery.

Researchers from the Centre d’Infection et d’Immunité de Lille and the Unité de Glycobiologie Structurale et Fonctionnelle have developed a new vaccine strategy based on the ingestion of genetically modified starch. They used antigens that have shown their efficacy in “conventional” vaccinations as vaccine candidates. They fused these antigens to an enzyme (GBSS) in a starch granule from the , Chlamydomonas reinhardtii. This enzyme has the particularity of functioning inside the starch granule and of being protected, along with the antigens grafted to it, against degradation by other enzymes. In this way, the researchers were able to produce several murine and human antigens of Plasmodium within starch grains. These grains were then ingested by mice inoculated with the parasite. The researchers demonstrated that the mice were vaccinated by the starch grains, which significantly protected them against infection.

Starch is the insoluble and semi-crystalline polysaccharide that is the most commonly found in photosynthetic organisms. A starch grain can easily be produced from a plant extract and purified, in large quantities. It has a very stable structure and can be stored for months with no particular precaution, even if it undergoes temperature variations. It is easily assimilated through digestion and has a major ecological and financial interest, with very low production costs.

The starch of edible plants could be transformed in the same way as that of the algae Chlamydomonas reinhardtii. Researchers are thus looking at the possibility of using starch from multi-cellular algae used in Africa as a food supplement, but also from maize and potatoes. Administered to children under 3 years of age, who are at high-risk of malaria-related mortality, such plants could be both a food source and a vaccine. This strategy would allow simple vaccination, avoid storage problems and syringes, and thus eliminate potential HIV contamination.

The strategy based on the ingestion of genetically modified starch is protected by a patent.

The researchers now plan to test the efficacy of various Plasmodium antigens and determine whether such strategy can be applied to humans by verifying it has no side effects.

physorg.com
More information: PloS One, 15 December 2010: http://www.plosone … pone.0015424 .