GCRF Sci-ART project

This tapestry came about through a community dialogue in the villages of Hamburg, Bodium and Bell in the Eastern Cape region of South Africa. The artists and crafters created the tapestry in response to the question: “what would life look like in your community if the goals of the START project are achieved?“.

Plants have evolved to produce an enormous range of chemical compounds to enable them to grow, reproduce and defend themselves. Some of these chemicals are used by people because of their useful properties: many medicines, colourants, pesticides and fragrances originally came from plants. Red Shepherd’s Purse is a small weed that defends itself against insect attack by producing compounds called nitriles. It detoxifies these poisons by using an enzyme to chemically convert them into nutrients that it can use. We would like to create new useful chemicals and medicines not found in nature by redesigning these enzymes, but to do this we need to understand how these “nanoscale chemical factories” function at the atomic level. It took almost twenty years for this to be accomplished, partly because of their pentameric shape, which forms irregular arrangements when stacked together. But now, with the help of START and the UK national electron bio-imaging centre (eBIC) at Diamond Light Source we have visualized the first intact enzyme of this kind in the world using cryo-EM and successfully modified it to produce new compounds for the first time. The tapestry shows Red Shepherd’s Purse being attacked by beetles, in the background pentamers stack together, but do not form a crystalline array.

Staphylococcus aureus is one of the ESKAPE pathogens, a group of organisms that are leading causes for community- and hospital-acquired infections globally. ESKAPE pathogens are also notoriously difficult to treat and are resistant to many first line antibiotics. Considering the rise in antimicrobial-resistant organisms there is a desperate need to identify new antimicrobial compounds that work differently from those currently in clinical use. With the GCRF START grant, we have established new, cutting-edge structural biology capabilities at Stellenbosch University in South Africa to collect data onsite and remotely from the UK’s world class national synchrotron, Diamond Light Source. This includes embarking on an exciting approach in drug discovery initiatives to identify new antimicrobial compounds using the fragmentbased drug discovery resources on the XChem beamline. The tapestry shows a microscope image of Staphylococcus aureus bacterium being ingested by a human neutrophil.

Build-up of fatty deposits in the arteries causes an increase in blood pressure, heart disease and stroke. Inhibitors of Angiotensin Converting Enzyme, a key enzyme in blood pressure regulation were originally discovered in snake venom and are used to lower blood pressure and treat heart disease. As part of the START project, we visualized the full-length Angiotensin Converting Enzyme for the first time using high-resolution cryo-EM at eBIC, Diamond Light Source. We hope that this research will be used to drive the design of new inhibitors with fewer side-effects. The tapestry depicts a heart that is lined with fatty deposits. A snake can be seen wriggling through, while in the background the dumbbellshaped enzyme as visualized by cryo-electron microscopy can be seen.

Sub-Saharan Africa has the highest levels of infection worldwide and young women here carry most of the HIV burden, with 4 of every 5 new infections in this region happening in women aged 15–19. Our main research focus is on making a vaccine for preventing HIV. To do this, we are using antibodies – immune fighters of the body – to prevent HIV infection. Our laboratory wants to help stop the spread of this virus. For our project with START, we are looking at how these immune soldiers called antibodies bind to HIV and stop the virus from entering human cells. Looking at this important immune interaction can help tell us how to design a vaccine to prevent people from getting infected. We collected data at Diamond Light Source and solved the X-ray crystallography structure for one member of a family of antibodies which has revealed a uniquely long loop in the light chain of the antibody – a loop up to three times longer than other published anti-HIV antibodies. The tapestry depicts HIV budding from a human cell – a reminder of what we are fighting against.

At the heart f the GCRF START project is Diamond Light Source, the UK’s national synchrotron. For the scientists involved in the START project’s Structural Biology stream, Diamond represents a way to see how life works at the level of individual atoms. This information is used to address the most difficult challenges facing the world today. These insights are crucial for African development, empowering African scientists to participate in this task. This whimsical tapestry shows an imaginary protein structure that echoes the shape of a synchrotron: a circular ring surrounded by experimental stations.

Catalysis is fundamental to developing a sustainable future across Africa; it underpins the production of fertilizers for food, generation of sustainable energy, and helps to keep clean the air we breathe and water we drink. The catalysts that allow these, and many other, technologies are often incredibly dynamic and can rapidly change their form whilst in operation. We are developing the tools that give us the ability to watch the evolution of these catalyst structures and understand how they function. The tapestry shows one of our new sample environments for performing these measurements at Diamond Light Source.

The first rotavirus was discovered in South Africa in 1958. Rotaviruses cause severe diarrhoea. Current vaccines are not very effective in developing countries. The tapestry represents a section through the virus. The outer spikes are used to attach to and enter cells and to stimulate antibodies for protection against infections. We are rationally designing and constructing novel viruses containing spikes from local rotavirus strains represented by the different coloured spikes.

Catalytic CO2 conversion to methanol is a potential option for producing renewable and sustainable fuels, reducing pollution, and dependence on non-renewable resources such as fossil fuels. Not only can methanol be used directly as a combustible fuel, or as a fuel for electrochemical Direct Methanol Fuel Cells (DMFC), it may also be converted to hydrocarbons, allowing for the production of synthetic gasoline closely resembling that obtained from non-renewable fossil sources. Such technologies are especially important for developing nations in Africa and beyond, as existing infrastructures can be readily adapted to utilise sustainably produced methanol-based fuels, making clean, affordable, and renewable energy easily available for the growing economies that require it most.

Approximately 40 million people worldwide are living with HIV and of this number about 70% reside in sub-Saharan Africa. Additionally, ~20% of the adult South African population are HIV positive. Although antiretroviral drugs are available it is important to note that they were specifically developed against subtype B HIV, the predominant subtype found in North America and Europe, whereas South Africa has mostly subtype C. An important question, therefore, arises as to the effectiveness of current drug compounds against subtype C HIV. HIV contains many proteins and one of these proteins is called a protease. It is a very attractive drug target because it is needed for the virus to mature. If we can stop the protease from working in the virus, we will be able to prevent the new viruses from infecting more cells. In order for us to achieve this, we must first understand the structure of the protease. Once this information is known, we will be able to design drugs that will work better at stopping the activity of the protease in subtype C HIV.

The materials we study can be used to make solar cells, which use the sun as a source of energy, which is a natural resource available In Africa. The data we obtain tells us how these materials organize themselves on devices, and this organization can affect how well the solar cells work. The materials we work with: ‘organic semiconductors’, have several advantages over the standard inorganic solar cells. In addition to using environmentally friendly manufacturing processes, they are lightweight and flexible, which due to weight and space concerns are easier to deploy in rural environments, as opposed to heavy, stiff, silicon based solar cells. Our research looks at how to improve the efficiency of these materials, because their efficiency is not yet commercially viable.

Opportunistic fungal pathogens invade vulnerable individuals, such as immunecompromised patients, and cause life-threatening mycoses. Anti-fungal agents are used to combat mycoses, but current therapies often suffer from toxicity, as well as emerging anti-fungal resistance, prompting the search for alternative targets. This picture depicts invasive aspergillosis, and the use of X-ray crystallography to examine the structures of fungal redox enzymes as novel anti-fungal targets. Our artwork shows the invasive aspergilli growing in the lung, as well as that we use crystallography to investigate the fungal targets.

The burden of Malaria is borne almost entirely by the people of Africa with 233 million infections and 608,000 deaths occurring in 2022. The cause of the disease is the parasite, Plasmodium falciparum, which is carried by the female Anopheles mosquito. The parasite multiplies in the mosquito and enters bloodstream through a bite, resulting in two further cycles of multiplication in the human host: in the liver and the red blood cells. The infection is usually diagnosed clinically by the presence of parasites (at the stage called trophozoites) in the red blood cells shown in the tapestry. Efforts are underway to discover new ways of preventing and curing the disease. Work done during the START program targeted the enzyme glutamine synthetase which is successfully used as a herbicide target in plants.

Xylanases from termite intestines can help produce food from biowaste. Termites are delicate, social insects that like humans occupy varied habitats. They survive the dry season in the African steppe by collecting grasses of low nutritional value, breaking down the associated biomass to its most basic units, and using these for food. The complicated degradation is assisted by bacteria that live within the termite gut. We produced different domain combinations from a xylanase secreted by one such bacterium to understand the role of each domain in degrading grass xylan to useful food compounds. The greater aim is to use similar enzymes or domains to produce high-value compounds such as ethanol from plentiful, non-food biowaste.

Global energy demand is currently mostly met by fossil fuels such as natural gas, coal and oil. These energy reserves are steadily running out and their use also generates greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide. There is a major drive to develop technology which uses renewable energy sources, such as solar and wind, to produce hydrocarbon fuels with carbon dioxide, thus closing the energy carbon cycle. This project focuses on the production of transportation fuels and chemicals by reaction of carbon dioxide with hydrogen over a catalyst (known as carbon dioxide hydrogenation). Our target is the development of an ironbased catalyst for this reaction, as this is currently the bottleneck for developing a viable process. The development of catalytic material involves extensive study of catalyst properties, such a phase, structural geometry and size. This research is multidisciplinary in nature, requiring a wide spectrum of techniques to determine catalytic properties. Thus, collaboration with national and international researchers who have expertise in these fields is vital. The tapestry shows the crystal lattice structure of a catalyst used for hydrogen purification, the energy source in fuel cells. The pattern formed echoes a South African style of cloth called Shwe Shwe that was originally introduced to Africa by European immigrants in the 1800s, but is now locally produced.

The goal of our project is to develop sustainable energy sources. Our research covers a variety of different components of lithium-ion batteries, solid oxide fuel cells and solar cells and how improving the performance or by making the component more affordable can truly benefit different communities. Our focus in lithium-ion batteries are the cathode material (LiFePO4) and how small changes in the synthetic method can change the structure and the solid-state electrolyte in the NASICON-type materials. The focus in solar cells are hybrid-perovskite thin films and making them more affordable and readily available for urban and rural communities. To truly work towards sustainability we need to investigate the fine detail of the structure of the different materials. To thoroughly investigate these materials we have used various different beamlines at Diamond Light Source. The tapestry represents a synchrotron ring with the different structures indicating the different beamlines with different results from different techniques completing the picture.

Perhaps the most important and rapidly growing renewable energy technology is that of solar cells. These devices can absorb the limitless energy provided to us by the sun and create electricity that benefits both industrialised and developing countries. All solar cell devices utilise a type of material called semiconductor that absorbs light and then produces an electrical current. The semiconductor that is most widely used in solar cells is silicon. While silicon solar cells can generate electricity from sunlight very efficiently, their initial manufacture requires lots of energy input. To make a more sustainable type of solar cell, many researchers would like to replace silicon with a semiconductor that requires less energy to produce – this would help solar cells be manufactured cheaply in greater volume and will speed the transition to a carbon-free future. Recently, researchers have found that a new type of synthetic semiconductor called a ‘perovskite’ can work very efficiently in solar cells, with such perovskites being based on very cheap materials, that can – in principle – be manufactured with a much lower energy input. Here, an ongoing project between researchers in the UK (University of Sheffield) and South Africa (University of the Witwatersrand) has looked to understand some of the basic properties of new types of perovskite materials.

Encapsulin is a cage-forming protein that houses enzymes. During a tuberculosis infection it protects the bacteria against the human immune system. Immune cells called macrophages try and destroy the bacteria by bombarding it with reactive oxygen species, the enzyme within the encapsulin cage breaks these down into harmless substances. We have determined the structure of encapsulin from tuberculosis and discovered that the holes within the cage aren’t big enough to allow the chemicals that are converted by the enzyme to pass through. But we know that they are definitely converted. We believe we have now solved this apparent contradiction. Here encapsulin is represented by a bird cage and the enzyme by a bird called a Bee Eater. A dragonfly, the bird’s favourite food, hovers outside the cage, but seems too big to fit through – the bird looks hungry – will it get its meal?

This tapestry is from the perspective of the UK scientists, who designed it to showcase some of the scientific results of the project.

1. Helical structure seen in a plant Nitrilase
2. BL21 Escherichia coli cells
3. A molecule of Tyrosine
4. Crystal structure of CtCPR
5. Purified recombinant AtNIT4
6. Ribbon diagram showing part of the crystal structure of CtCPR
7. Organic semiconductor alpha-sexithiophene
8. Purified recombinant AtNIT4
9. Gold nanoparticles/colloids
10. Purified recombinant AtNIT4
11. Purified recombinant AtNIT4
12. Zinc Oxide (ZnO) thin film
13. Calculated structure of unit cell of a perovskite lattice
14. Gold nanoparticles/colloids
15. Purified recombinant AtNIT4
16. Gold nanoparticles/colloids

Originally designed for the entrance to the Palais de l’Assemblee in India, we have reinterpreted Le Corbusier’s design. The upper half of the panel represents the Energy Materials line of the GCRF START project and includes imagery of the sun, solstices, lunar eclipses, and the equinox. The colours and simplified forms allude to the elements, energy, and physics. The lower half is populated with animals and natural forms and symbolizes the Structural Biological line. Imagery includes cattle, which historically formed the focal point of Xhosa culture because they bound together the material realm with the sacred. The Keiskamma River, which is central to life in the region. Trees and wild animals, representing the natural environment and in the centre of the panel: the Tree of Knowledge bears fruit, representing the benefits of science to people’s lives.