DIPLOMICS

16/10/2026

Nearly half of a dried mopane worm is protein. Now it’s in the bread.

UKZN researcher Andiswa Masuku baked termite and mopane worm meal into everyday loaves, putting a traditional protein into a food people already trust and already buy.

In a country where 27% of children showed signs of stunting in 2016, a smarter loaf is worth taking seriously.

But a food is only as secure as the species it comes from. Mopane worms are harvested from the wild, and rising demand, habitat loss and climate change are raising questions about how long that can last. Through 1KSA, DIPLOMICS has sequenced the mopane worm’s genome, giving researchers a reference to study wild populations and work out how to harvest them sustainably.

This year’s World Food Day theme is “Innovate today. Nourish tomorrow.” Some innovations arrive as new technology. This one arrives as a slice of toast.

13/10/2026

The double helix is one of the most recognised images in science. It is also a model, not a photograph.

The structure of DNA was determined in 1953 through X-ray diffraction, a technique that interprets how molecules scatter X-rays rather than imaging them directly. What Rosalind Franklin, Watson, and Crick worked with was mathematical data, not a picture.

Direct imaging of DNA has improved significantly with advances in electron microscopy, but even the clearest images produce something far less elegant than the textbook diagram. On a sequencing screen, DNA never appears as a helix at all. It arrives as an electrical signal, translated by software into a string of letters.

The science of genomics is built entirely on information we cannot directly see.

09/10/2026

A cycad needs two things to make seed: a partner of the opposite s*x, and an insect to carry pollen between them.

Encephalartos woodii lost both. A single clump was found in 1895, and the last stem was removed from the wild in 1916. Every one of the roughly 500 plants now growing in gardens around the world is a male, descended from that one clump. Watch this sapace for more on this. E.woodii sequence loading.

That's the context for this milestone. The five cycad beetle genomes now on 1KSA were contributed by Prof. John Donaldson (Wild Cycad Conservancy; University of Pretoria) and Paul Janse van Rensburg (Stellenbosch University), and the assemblies are strong: BUSCO completeness scores range from 98.6% to 99.7%.

They also hold a surprise. The 7mm weevil has a draft genome of about 0.28 gigabases. A cycad fungus beetle less than 4.5mm long has one closer to 1 gigabase, nearly four times larger. Body size, it turns out, tells you very little about what's written inside.

For researchers working on host specificity and pollinator recovery, that's the point. You can't protect a partnership until you know exactly who the partners are.

Explore the species cards at 1ksa.org.za.

08/10/2026

Fermentation predates written history. The microbial science behind it is still being written.

For most of human history, fermentation was managed empirically: use what works, pass it down, adjust by instinct. The communities of bacteria and yeasts driving the process were invisible and largely unknown.

DNA sequencing has changed that. It is now possible to identify not just which organisms are present in a fermentation culture, but how they interact, compete, and contribute to the final product. That has implications across food science, pharmaceutical production, and the documentation of traditional fermentation knowledge.

30/09/2026

Gene editing is generating significant scientific momentum. New CRISPR-based therapies are moving through trials for conditions that were previously considered untreatable.

But the conversation around treatment often skips a step: diagnosis. For many rare disease patients, identifying what they have takes years. Most rare diseases have a genetic basis, which means genomics is not only relevant to developing treatments but to finding the disease in the first place. Whole genome sequencing is now identifying variants that standard clinical pathways can sometimes miss.

The Nngwe project is applying multi-omics and clinical expertise to shorten the diagnostic journey for rare disease patients in South Africa. The science of treatment is advancing rapidly. The science of finding the disease still needs to catch up.

01/09/2026

South Africans mark the 1st of September as Spring Day, and the blushing bride is right on cue. Serruria florida flowers from July to October, so its short blooming window is happening right now, on the same slopes near Franschhoek it has bloomed on for generations.

Getting its genome sequenced this season felt fitting: one more piece of a fragile species captured while it's actually in flower.

Full species card and data: 1ksa.org.za/species-cards/serruria-florida

28/08/2026

Three of the four Clivia genomes came together the way you hope every genome will. The fourth, Clivia miniata, didn't.

It meant going back to re-extract the DNA, re-trimming the data, and rethinking how the assembly used CHPC's computing time before it would resolve properly. That's the part of genomics that doesn't make it onto a results slide: the iterating, the troubleshooting, the going back to the bench.

This week, it paid off.

For more on this story, come find us at SASBi/SAGS, 1 to 3 September, see you there!

28/08/2026

Meet Sideroxylon inerme, the white milkwood. The name literally means “iron wood,” a nod to timber so dense it earned the tree a reputation long before anyone sequenced its DNA.

Along South Africa’s coast, the white milkwood is a protected species: fire-resistant, a natural windbreak, and in places, a genuine piece of history. In Cape Town’s Woodstock, the “Treaty Tree” has stood for 500 years as a witness to the country’s colonial past.

On the Agulhas Plain, Grootbos Private Nature Reserve holds some of the last great milkwood forests left, forests that wildfires in 2006 and again in 2025 came close to destroying.

Through its Future Trees project, Grootbos Green Futures Foundation is restoring those forest edges using historical aerial photography from 1932 and seed collected from local genetic stock, work led on the ground by research manager Paula Strauss.

That’s where 1KSA comes in. By sequencing the white milkwood’s genome, 1KSA and DIPLOMICS are helping build the genomic library that shows how milkwood populations relate to each other, how they adapt, and which trees carry the strongest resilience, so that restoration work like this is backed by more than instinct.

28/08/2026

Meet Sideroxylon inerme, the white milkwood. The name literally means "iron wood," a nod to timber so dense it earned the tree a reputation long before anyone sequenced its DNA.

Along South Africa's coast, the white milkwood is a protected species: fire-resistant, a natural windbreak, and in places, a genuine piece of history. In Cape Town's Woodstock, the "Treaty Tree" has stood for 500 years as a witness to the country's colonial past.

On the Agulhas Plain, Grootbos Private Nature Reserve holds some of the last great milkwood forests left, forests that wildfires in 2006 and again in 2025 came close to destroying.

Through its Future Trees project, Grootbos foundation is restoring those forest edges using historical aerial photography from 1932 and seed collected from local genetic stock, work led on the ground by research manager Paula Strauss.

That's where 1KSA comes in. By sequencing the white milkwood's genome, 1KSA and DIPLOMICS are helping build the genomic library that shows how milkwood populations relate to each other, how they adapt, and which trees carry the strongest resilience, so that restoration work like this is backed by more than instinct.

Watch the full story here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kKgzka_8q7E

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21/08/2026

The BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes, present and necessary in all women and men, are best known for their association with breast and ovarian cancer risk. Women who carry certain variants in these genes have a significantly elevated lifetime risk of developing breast cancer compared to the general population.

But carrying a BRCA pathogenic variant is not a sentence. It is information. And information creates options: increased surveillance, preventive measures, and treatment decisions that can be made earlier and with greater precision.

Genomic testing is making it possible for more women to access that information. Understanding your genetic risk does not mean living in fear of it. It means being equipped to make informed decisions about your own health.

This Women's Month, DIPLOMICS celebrates the science that puts knowledge, and power, in women's hands.

Source: National Cancer Institute. BRCA Gene Mutations: Cancer Risk and Genetic Testing.