2021-02-25 15:30:28 GMT2021-02-25 23:30:28(Beijing Time) Xinhua English
GABORONE, Feb. 25 (Xinhua) Botswana Innovation Hub (BIH) has launched a new funding program dubbed Grand Challenges Botswana, to support innovations that can accelerate progress towards achieving national development priorities and economic transformation. Launching Grand Challenges Botswana today, gives me renewed hope that we are on course towards achieving our national Vision 2036 aspirations. We are looking at a five-year implementation plan in which we target supporting key projects that will scale commercially, locally and regionally, building a portfolio with potential to create jobs, said Douglas Letsholathebe, minister of tertiary education, research, science and technology on Wednesday.
(Graphic) K. Franklin/Science
Those databases will illuminate studies of human variation worldwide, in part because the great genomic diversity in Africans can uncover spurious links to medical conditions, explains Concepcion Nierras, an NIH Common Fund geneticist. For example, in Europeans a rare variant of a gene for a low-density lipoprotein that contributes to high cholesterol seemed to raise the risk of heart disease. But Fatumo and his colleagues found that among Africans, the variant was common even in those who did not have heart disease, suggesting it may not have clinical relevance. The
Nature paper uncovered 54 such variants that now need re-evaluation.