IU awarded $2.7 million for establishment of Drosophila Genome Research Center

By David Bricker

"We will be putting together a center that develops, archives and distributes Drosophilagenomics resources to researchers nationally and internationally," said CGB Genomics Lab Director Justen Andrews, who will administer the new center with CGB Director Peter Cherbas and biologist Thom Kaufman. "DGRC's addition to an already comprehensive fly research program here will effectively make Bloomington the Drosophilacapital of the world. The grant also allows us to hire as many as 15 new life sciences staff to broaden and deepen our research and services."

Geneticists have studied Drosophila species for nearly 100 years -- longer than any other model organism in the history of genetics. In that time, scientists have learned a great deal about how Drosophila genes work and interact and, by inference, how human and other organisms' genes function.

IUB has long been an unofficial nexus for the world's thousands of Drosophilai> researchers. The university hosts and maintains the ever-growing FlyBase, a massive database of Drosophila DNA sequence information. Additionally, staff at the Bloomington Drosophila Stock Center at IU breed, store and distribute novel genetic strains of Drosophila to researchers who need flies for experiments. Kaufman estimates the center now sends out about 2,000 strains each week from the stock center's living library.

"With the new grant, I can only see the number of outgoing Drosophila packages increasing," Kaufman said. "Many researchers prefer to fork over their creations to us and let us handle the distribution."

NIH funding of the DGRC comes from the National Center for Research Resources and the National Institute of General Medical Sciences. Kaufman and IUB biologists Kathleen Matthews and Kevin Cook currently await approval of a $24 million NIH grant to expand and further modernize FlyBase as well as a $4.5 million National Science Foundation grant to expand the Drosophila Stock Center