바이오인

 
캐나다 몬트리올에 있는 맥길 대학의 유전학자 Tom Hudson 박사는 지난주에 자신이 국제 게놈 연구 컨소시엄에 참여할 캐나다 몫인 950만 달러의 연구비를 받게 됐다는 소식을 듣고 자신의 귀를 의심했다. 몬트리올 유전체학 센터(Montreal Genomics Centre)의 책임자이기도 한 그는 자신의 프로젝트가 세계에서 가장 경쟁력 있는 게놈 프로젝트 가운데 하나가 될 것이라고 자신감을 피력했다.

 

Hudson 박사는 단상형(haplotype)이라고 불리는 긴 DNA를 분석함으로써 질병에 관련된 유전자 검색을 돕는 프로젝트에 참여하게 된다. 그의 프로젝트는 ?게놈 캐나다?에서 지원한 34개 프로젝트 가운데 하나이다. 게놈 캐나다는 2년 전에 캐나다의 유전체학과 단백질체학(proteomics) 연구를 위해 설립된 비영리 기관이다. 이 기관은 중앙 정부 및 지방 정부의 지원과 산업계의 지원을 합해 4억 달러의 기금을 조성함으로써 캐나다를 국제 게놈 연구 컨소시엄에서 중심적인 위치로 올려놓을 준비를 하고 있다.

 

이번에 연구비를 받게 된 몇 개의 다른 프로젝트들은 다음과 같다; 단백질간 상호작용에 대한 대량 공공 데이터베이스 구축 프로젝트에 1575만 달러, 유전자 발현 조절 인자 연구 프로젝트에 400만 달러, 유전체학 데이터를 분석하기 위한 새로운 소프트웨어 개발 프로젝트에 630만 달러 등.

 

게놈 캐나다는 또한 국제사회에서 캐나다의 비중을 높이기 위한 목적으로도 기금을 사용하고 있다. 그 결과 두 연구팀이 각각 673만 달러와 375만 달러의 연구비를 받아 C. elegans의 단백질 기능 연구 프로젝트와 유전자 기능을 결정하기 위한 변형된 핵산 기술 프로젝트로 스웨덴 캐롤린스카 연구소와 공동연구를 수행하게 됐다. 뿐만 아니라 감자 게놈 지도 작성을 위해 다른 두 나라와 협력 연구를 추진하고 있고 수산 컨소시엄을 구성하기 위해 노르웨이와의 협상이 진행 중이다.

 

지금까지 캐나다의 게놈 연구는 세계에서 이탈리아, 오스트레일리아, 스위스 등과 함께 세 번째 그룹에 속하고 있었다. 게놈 연구의 선두 주자는 미국이고 영국, 일본, 독일, 프랑스가 두 번째 그룹을 형성하고 있다. 그러나 이번 투자로 인해 캐나다의 위상은 더욱 높아지게 될 것으로 보인다.

 

  정보출처   http://www.sciencemag.org  

 

OTTAWA--When geneticist Tom Hudson of McGill University in Montreal learned last week that he would receive $9.5 million to finance Canada's 10% stake in a proposed international research consortium, he wondered for a moment whether he was still living in Canada. "It's unbelievable. This is going to be one of the most high-profile genome projects in the world, and we're the first group funded," enthused Hudson, the director of the Montreal Genomics Centre.

 

Hudson will be participating in a project to researchers refine their search for genes implicated in diseases by mapping long stretches of DNA called haplotypes (Science, 27 July 2001, p. 583). It's one of 34 projects funded last week by Genome Canada, a nonprofit agency created 2 years ago to boost Canada's capacity in genomics and proteomics likely to benefit key industrial sectors such as health, agriculture, forestry, and fisheries as well as the environment (see graphic). The agency has raised a total of $400 million from federal, provincial, and industry sources. Combined with an earlier round of awards (Science, 13 April 2001, p. 186), the $195 million committed last week will buy Canada a prominent place in a host of international research consortia, says Genome Canada president Martin Godbout.

 

 

A healthy lead.

Health-related research tops Genome Canada's agenda, followed by other economically important sectors.

SOURCE: GENOME CANADA

 

Hudson won't know which chromosome his group will be mapping until his expected partners, including the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research/MIT Center for Genome Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the Sanger Centre in Hinxton, U.K., line up funding from U.S. and U.K. sources. But it's a heady experience to be leading the pack. Except for a few financially modest individual efforts, Canadian scientists sat on the sidelines during the torrid race to sequence the human genome and lamented government backs that tied their hands.

 

The new funding will allow Canada to ahead on several fronts. In addition to the haplotype map, the second group of awards includes $15.75 million for a massive public database on protein interactions (Science, 8 June 2001, p. 1813), $4 million for Marco Marra and Steven Jones of the British Columbia Cancer Research Centre in Vancouver to study the regulatory elements of gene expression, and $6.3 million for University of Calgary, Alberta, molecular biologist Chrih Sensen to develop a new software program for analyzing genomics data.

 

The money will also let Canada carry its weight in international circles, says Godbout. A grant of $6.73 million was awarded to molecular biologist David Baillie of Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia, to determine protein function in the soil nematode Caenorhabditis elegans, and microbiologist Sherif Abou Elela of the University of Sherbrooke, Quebec, received $3.75 million to test modified nucleic acid technologies in determining gene function. Both projects will be done jointly with the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm. Genome Canada is negotiating with two other nations to build a consortium to map the genome of the potato, Godbout says, and with Norway to develop a consortium in fisheries. Negotiations are nearly complete on collaborative agreements with the Netherlands and Spain under which scientists from those countries will compete for funding on topics of mutual interest. Talks have also been launched with Germany, Japan, France, and the United Kingdom. "Our vision for the next 5 years will be ed on top-down strategic initiatives," Godbout says. "But we had to first build up the base."

 

An analysis for the government of published papers showed Canada clinging to the third tier, along with Italy, Australia, and Switzerland, while the United States led the way and the United Kingdom, Japan, Germany, and France were bunched in second place. The investments by Genome Canada should it up the ladder, says Francis Collins, director of the U.S. National Human Genome Research Institute, which has recently announced a $32 million competition to work on the haplotype map. "Until Genome Canada, Canada did not have available the kind of funding capabilities that make it possible to be a player on the big stage," Collins says. The money has been especially useful in providing world-class facilities and equipment, adds Thomas Caskey, president of Houston's Cogene Biotech Ventures Ltd. and head of the 32-member international peer-review panel that waded through the $1.1 billion worth of applications in the second round.

 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Wayne Kondro writes from Ottawa.

  Summary of this Article 
  Reprint (PDF) Version of this Article 
  Similar articles found in:
SCIENCE Online 
  Search Medline for articles by:
Kondro, W. 
  Alert me when:
new articles cite this article
 
  Down to Citation Manager 
    
  Collections under which this article appears:
Scientific Community
 
  Genetics
 
  Science and Policy 
 

Volume 296, Number 5566, Issue of 12 Apr 2002, pp. 239-241.
Copyright ⓒ 2002 by The American Association for the Advancement of Science. All rights reserved.