Glue grants to tackle stickyissueA consortium of nearly 30 researchers ofwidely differing disciplines is due to receive$38 million over the course of five years tostudy cell migration. The consortium’sinvestigators and collaborators, who arebased mainly in the USA, include biologists,chemists, biophysicists, optical physicists,mathematicians, computer scientists,geneticists and engineers. Rick Horwitz, leadinvestigator for the consortium commented:‘Complex issues such as cell migration arenot going to be solved quickly by singleinvestigators working alone. We wanted toput together scientists who are particularlyknown for their collaborative and interactiveapproach to science’. ‘Science is getting morecomplicated’, said J. Thomas Parsons,co-principal investigator. ‘With all thetechnologies that are out there and thediverse experimental paradigms one has toapply with complex projects, it’s impossibleto center all those technologies in a single lab,or even in a single university.’ The consortiumwill focus on the structure of the large multi-molecular complexes that drive cellmigration and on developing mathematicalmodels of migration. ‘Our plan is to get thosereagents or information or technology andput them out in the community as soon aspossible’, said Horwitz. Consortiumresearchers will share and discuss data asthey are collected, using a publicly accessiblewebsite: http://www.cellmigration.org/. The$38 million award, known as a ‘glue’ grant, isonly the second of its kind awarded by the USNational Institute of General MedicalSciences (NIGMS), part of the NIH. TheNIGMS began the initiative last year tosupport multi-investigator, interdisciplinarycollaborations on complex biomedicalproblems and will announce two more grantsthis year. For further information, seewww.nigms.nih.gov/funding/gluegrants.htmlA.M.

Asian hub foundationThe Singapore authorities have unveilednew plans to make Singapore a world-classcenter of biomedical research. Over the pastdecade, Singapore has doubled its budgetfor research, and a total of $1.6 billion isdesignated for boosting biomedical

research and development, The Starreports. The government says thebiomedical sector should become the fourthpillar supporting the country’smanufacturing economy. The newinitiatives, suggested by an InternationalAdvisory Council, include setting up abiomedical database network, designatedthe Biomedical Grid, and the establishmentof the Singapore Tissue Network, whichplans to explore the combination ofaccurately recorded Singapore patient dataand the diverse ethnological composition ofSingapore and neighboring countries. Anew biomedical research park, Biopolis, willbe the future bustling center of many newand planned research institutes andcorporate research labs. By promoting thewhole biomedical sector, from basalbiological research to pharmaceuticalcompanies and clinical trials, Singaporehopes to generate a critical mass that willconvince scientists from all over the worldthat Singapore is good place to do science.J.d.B.

GM crops go walkies

Two recent reports revive concerns about theimplications of large-scale use of geneticallymodified (GM) crops. The Mexicangovernment announced that GM DNA couldbe detected in seeds collected fromendogenous corn varieties at 15 differentlocations, the New York Times reports. So far,it’s unclear what the source of the DNA is, butexperts think it likely that transgenic ‘Bt’ cornhas interbred with local plants. Bt corn carriesa bacterial toxin gene that protects the plantfrom the European corn borer pest.Considering that Bt corn, or indeed any GMcrop, cannot be grown in Mexico, the findingssuggest that geography and plant varietyimpose smaller barriers for transmission oftransgenes than previously anticipated.

Bt corn was also a focus of attention in sixpapers published on-line in PNAS on14 September (Zangerl et al., Sears et al.,Hellmich et al., Pleasants et al., Stanley-Hornet al., Oberhauser et al.). Previous work hadindicated that, under laboratory conditions,Bt toxin not only killed European corn borersbut also harmless black swallowtailcaterpillars. Here, the authors report that Btcorn pollen can contaminate neighboringplants with doses high enough to kill theswallowtail caterpillars. However, the studiesalso show that Bt toxin rarely exceeds lethaldoses in the fields and poses only a minorthreat to the ecosystem. Moreover, theharmful Bt corn variant Bt176 is only aprototype – new Bt corn variants are notharmful, and Syngenta, the producer of Btcorn, has already taken Bt176 off the market.J.d.B.

Transgenic monkey – nowavailable in greenResearchers at University of WisconsinMedical School have used gene transfer intopreimplantation Rhesus monkey embryosto create transgenic placental tissue. Thework showed the ability to generatetransgenic monkeys in which the gene ofinterest, in this case GFP, is expressed, up toand after birth [Wolfgang et al. (2001) Proc.Natl. Acad. Sci. U. S. A. 98, 10728–10732].The current work differs from that publishedlast year describing ANDi – the firsttransgenic primate – in that the transgenewas actually expressed. ANDi contained theGFP transgene in all tissues examined butdid not produce detectable levels of theprotein. The current transgenic animalsonly express GFP in placenta and otherextraembryonic tissue. The model systemwill facilitate study of the role of theplacenta during primate pregnancy. D.S.

The Nature of Humankind inLondonA giant 120 m x 3 m hoarding outside theWellcome Trust building in London is thesite of a new work by New York artist Jason Middlebrook. Middlebrook’s artwork,The Nature of Humankind, wascommissioned by the Trust to highlight itsrole in the decoding of the human genome.It is the UK’s longest public artwork and issaid by the artist to reflect the similarities

TRENDS in Cell Biology Vol.11 No.12 December 2001

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