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Human Genome News Archive Edition

Human Genome News, March 1991; 2(6)

Drosophila Genome Meeting

A workshop on Drosophila genome research, held in Madison, Wisconsin, on August 3-5, 1990, was cosponsored by the National Center for Human Genome Research (NCHGR) and the University of Wisconsin Graduate School. The meeting's goals included consideration of the following:

• the current state of Drosophila genome analysis,
• possible goals of Drosophila genome research, and
• possible strategies for achieving these goals.

In addition to investigators from the Drosophila community, the workshop was attended by representatives of the Caenorhabditis elegans genome project and by experts in sequencing technology and biocomputing. Because of the important issues raised and the limited number of workshop participants, attendees published a summary report of the proceedings. Readers may request a copy of the summary report from HGMIS at no charge.

Participants gave several reasons for their view that Drosophila research should be given a high priority in the allocation of funds for the genome initiative:

• Well-designed sequencing projects targeted on any of several loci on the Drosophila genome are likely to yield important, easily interpretable, and scientifically useful data to the research community as a whole.
• Many complex biological processes in humans are also found in Drosophila, and sequence analyses of selected regions of its genome are likely to provide important clues to the genetic control of analogous processes in humans.
• Drosophila is unique in that the polytene chromosomes already provide a high-resolution physical map to which the molecular map may be easily aligned.
• The P element and similar transposons promise to be powerful tools for enhancing genetic research and are likely to provide new methods for accessing other organisms' DNA for physical mapping and sequence analysis.
• The Drosophila genome's size allows reasonable expectation of a complete sequence analysis.

The workshop included reports from current and proposed Drosophila genome projects, discussions of genome analysis work being done on C. elegans and Escherichia coli, reports on current initiatives to manage information and strain maintenance and distribution, and a description of advanced sequencing technologies.

Drosophila Workshop Recommendations

• Configure ongoing genome projects so that they share information with each other and with the Drosophila community.
• Place high priority on the development and maintenance of informatics systems.
• Initiate annual workshops, which will include Drosophila researchers not directly involved in genome programs, to help disseminate the fruits of the project and refine priorities reflecting the genome community's changing needs.

Workshop To Develop Paper on Database

The 32nd Annual Drosophila Research Conference in Chicago will include a March 23 workshop, chaired by Dan Lindsley (University of California, San Diego), to give updates on the Drosophila genome project and to develop a community position paper on computerizing the Drosophila database.

Contact: Anne Marie Langevin, 301/571-1825

Reported by William S. Reznikoff
Department of Biochemistry
University of Wisconsin

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Human Genome Program, U.S. Department of Energy, Human Genome News (v2n6).

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