New plea: just $5m needed for homegrown genome project

Australia risks being left out in the cold if it doesn't participate in efforts to sequence the marsupial genome, say leading genomics scientists who are trying to raise AUD$5 million in support of Australian participation.

According to Australian Genome Research Facility director Dr Sue Forrest and former director Prof John Mattick, the US National Human Genomic Research Institute, which coordinates genome sequencing efforts, has all but chosen the American opossum, rather than the tammar wallaby, as the marsupial species of choice, shutting Australia out of the picture.

But the NIH-funded institute may be willing to compromise -- if Australia can come up with the cash in short order. At the International Congress of Genetics held in Melbourne in June this year, NHGRI director Francis Collins indicated that Australian participation would be welcomed, even though the bulk of the project would probably be carried out in the USA where there are ample resources to carry out the project.

Forrest said just $5 million was enough for Australia to complete about two million sequencing reads, or up to one-twentieth of the total cost of the project. The funding would pay for the cost of personnel and consumables, while the four new sequencing instruments required would come out of the AGRF's recent Major National Research Facilities grant.

She is hoping that the federal and state governments and funding agencies are willing to kick in between $500,000 and $1 million each. Qantas has also been approached as a possible sponsor.

According to Mattick, the need for Australia to participate in the project is important for two reasons.

"Unless we do the genome of the wallaby, Australian marsupials will no longer be the focus of marsupial research," he said. A wealth of information about marsupial physiology and molecular evolution has been generated by researchers in Australia using the tammar wallaby and other marsupial species.

"It's also a symbol of Australia's ability to participate in international projects -- we can't even do our own species."

Mattick said the failure to sequence an Australian marsupial would not go unnoticed by the international scientific community, and it would be seen as an act of hypocrisy that the country with the vast majority of marsupial species was unwilling to participate in the sequencing project.

"Australia likes to think it's doing leading-edge science, but in the biggest transition in scientific history, the Human Genome Project, Australia did diddlysquat," Mattick said. "This is our chance to make a contribution."

Ironically, the AGRF was set up precisely to allow Australian researchers access to cutting-edge technologies and enable participation in global efforts.

But Mattick said he believed there was a lack of commitment to doing significant genome projects in Australia, due to a lack of appreciation of the role of genomics as an information science in its own right.