The world’s most valued plant
database faces extinction
because its funding is being
phased out by the US National
Science Foundation (NSF), and
no alternative source is on the
horizon.
“This is the wrong way to
go,” says genomics researcher
Ernest Retzel of the National
Center for Genome Resources
in Santa Fe, New Mexico. “I
believe it will set the field
back.”
The NSF says that it does
not have a policy to support
long-term, established
research-infrastructure projects
such as the Arabidopsis
Information Resource (TAIR),
which maintains a free, open-
access database of genetic
and molecular-biology data for
Arabidopsis thaliana, or thale cress,
the widely used model plant. “We
didn’t approach this decision in
isolation, we considered our whole
portfolio,” says Peter Arzberger,
director of the Division of Biological
Infrastructure at the NSF. “We
rely on peer review in setting
our priorities.” The NSF has
suggested that TAIR develop
its own self-supporting
funding model, based on
user subscriptions and other
sources of income.
But TAIR director Eva Huala
told an international meeting
on database and bioresource
sustainability, held in Rome
on 11–12 November, that
introducing a subscription
system would destroy, not
save, TAIR.
Huala, a member of the
Department of Plant Biology at the
Carnegie Institution for Science
in Stanford, California, presented
preliminary results of a survey
among TAIR users, which revealed
that many would be reluctant to
submit data to TAIR if these were
not freely shared.
Established ten years ago, TAIR
integrates data submitted by the
community with data extracted
from the literature, and it has
evolved into the plant community’s
foremost authority on matters
relating to plant genomics,
regulating nomenclature and
developing curation standards. It is
much more widely used than other
plant databases because of its
all-inclusive nature and the quality
of its curation.
TAIR also feeds information into
other specialist databases, such
as those of the National Center
for Biotechnology Information
in Bethesda, Maryland, and the
international protein database
UniProt. In addition, it links to the
Arabidopsis Biological Resource
Plant genetics database at risk as funds run dry
The popular model plant Arabidopsis thaliana.
Japanese researchers are in uproar about
the drastic budget cuts being recommended
for science projects by a new cabinet-level
government advisory unit.
Since 11 November, working groups of the
Government Revitalization Unit, created in
September and chaired by Prime Minister
Yukio Hatoyama, have been re-evaluating 220
government-funded programmes, including
dozens of prominent science projects.
The drastic shake-up will hit the SPring-8
synchrotron in Harima, a planned super-
computer that was destined to be the world’s
fastest, ocean drilling projects and basic grant
programmes, to name but a few.
The recommendations, part of an effort to
trim ¥3 trillion (US$ 33.7 billion) off next year’s
budget, are the most concrete indication so far
that Japan’s new government intends to make
comprehensive, long-lasting changes to the
country’s research priorities.
Scientists are reacting with frustration and,
in some cases, apocalyptic predictions. One
prominent crystallographer, who requested
anonymity, told Nature: “If this goes on, Japa-
nese scientists, including young scientists, will
flow overseas, and Japanese science will die.”
Hatoyama’s government rode into power
in August, promising to shift government
expenditure from wasteful projects to initia-
tives that will benefit the average person, such
as ending highway tolls. In August, Hatoyama
told Nature that he would nonetheless increase
support for science1.
But since then, his government has been slic-
ing into budgets. In October, the science and
education ministry reduced the total grants for
30 of the projects under the Funding Program
for World-Leading Innovative R&D on Science
and Technology (FIRST) from ¥270 billion to
¥100 billion2.
On 8 October, after chairing a meeting of
the Council for Science and Technology Policy,
Japan’s highest science-policy body, Hatoyama
noted that his cabinet is “extremely rare”
because it includes several engineers, such as
himself. “Because we too did research, we know
that researchers and academics can get drunk
on their own studies,” he said, according to the
economic newspaper Nihon Keizai Shimbun.
“Isn’t it more appropriate to promote research
that matches a new social system?”
At daily hearings in Tokyo, the unit’s three
working groups are devoting one hour to each
project under review. The sessions can be
viewed live on the Internet3, and recommen-
dations for the latest projects to be evaluated
are uploaded to the website daily, with the basic
message displayed in red. This is a startling
amount of transparency for Japan, where budg-
ets are usually delivered after bureaucrats strike
deals in back rooms. “It’s difficult to cut deals
now,” says Atsushi Sunami, director of science
and technology policy at the National Gradu-
ate Institute for Policy Studies in Tokyo.
The 19 members of Working Group 3, which
is reviewing science projects, include econo-
mists, a financial strategist, local government
officials and other representatives of the public,
along with a few scientists. It is usually ministry
officials, not scientists, who have had to defend
the projects under review.
The working group has already recom-
mended that the ¥10.8 billion annual budget
of SPring-8, the merits of which “were not ade-
quately explained”, be cut by one-third to one-
half and be supplemented by charging users.
“The cuts to SPring-8 are devastating,” says
Japanese science faces deep cuts
The government’s election promises vowed more support for science, but so far budgets look set to shrink.
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