REPORT FROM BARBARA WAKIMOTO, SUSAN PARKHURST AND MARSHA RYAN ON THE 1999

II. Areas of Primary Research Interest

	Slide Request	Poster	Total
Cell Cycle	24	20	44
Chromosome Structure and Function	33	41	74
Cytoskeleton Assembly and Dynamics	17	21	38
Gametogenesis	37	36	73
Neural Development	35	39	74
Neural Physiology and Behavior	32	32	64
Organogenesis and Muscle Development	19	28	47
Pattern Formation	62	66	128
Populations and Evolution	28	17	45
RNA Processing Localization and Translation	16	16	32
Signal Transduction and Apoptosis	56	50	106
Techniques	11	2	13
Transcriptional Regulation	18	27	45
Transposable Elements and DNA Repair	9	10	19

III. Keywords

IV. Workshops.

*Workshop Title*	*Moderator*

Ecdysone Workshop	Broadus, Julie
The Sequence of the Drosophila Genome	Celniker, Sue
Telomere Structure and Function	Mason, Jim
Resources in the Post-Genomic World: A Community Forum	Tompkins, Laurie
Stem and Cells and Asymmetric Division	Lin, Haifan
Technical Advances	Carthew, Richard
RNA	Lopez, A. Javier
Drosophila Immunity	Hoffmann, Jules
Drosophila Research in Drug Discovery	Carroll, Pamela

4. REPORT OF THE SANDLER LECTURER COMMITTEE (Bill Saxton)

I. 2000 Sandler Award Committee

Amy Bejsovec

Tom Cline

Joe Duffy

Chris Field

Janice Fischer

Scott Hawley

Bill Saxton (Chair)

Bill Sullivan (1999 Chair)

II. Applications.

A. Applications consisted of

1. Thesis abstract.

2. Student's CV

3. Letter of support from Advisor

B. 12 Applicants: (and Ph.D. Advisors)

Purnima Bhanot (Jeremy Nathans)

Bin Chen (Sidney Strickland)

Robert Cavallo (Mark Peifer)

Daniel Cox (Haifan Lin)

Anupama Dahanukar (Robin Wharton)

Karen Fitch (Barbara Wakimoto)

Amin Ghabrial (Trudy Schupbach)

Sarah Gibbs (James Truman)

Douglas Guarnieri (Michael Simon)

Eric Lai (James Posakony)

Tracy Tang (Terry Orr-Weaver)

Mark Wu (Hugo Bellen)

III. Selection Process:

A. Criteria for judging the applicants.

1. Quality of research.

2. Depth of experimental analyses

3. Creativity, continuity, and depth of thought.

4. Independence of applicant

5. Significance of contribution

B. Initial round of selection.

1. Each committee member ranked the applications (#1=top, 12=bottom).

2. The 6 with the best scores (lowest summed ranking numbers) were carried forward.

Comment: The applications were all excellent and this step in the process was quite difficult.

C. Second round of selection.

1. Each committee member submitted comments on the 6 semifinalists to the chair via email.

2. Comments were collated and then sent back out to the committee.

3. Each committee member picked their top 3 applicants.

4. Positions 3 and 4 were ambiguous, so we declared 4 finalists.

Bin Chen (Sidney Strickland)

Daniel Cox (Haifan Lin)

Douglas Guarnieri (Michael Simon)

Eric Lai (James Posakony)

D. Final round of selection.

1. Finalists were asked to send 8 copies of their theses to the Chair.

2. A set of 4 theses was sent to each committee member by the chair.

3. After reading the theses, comments were exchanged as before.

4. Each committee member voted for their top choice.

5. Bin Chen received 5 of the 8 votes.

IV. The Sandler Award 2000

A. Opening talk of the Drosophila Research Conference Wed. March 22.

B. Publication of thesis (after editing) as a monograph by Kluwer Academic Publishers.

C. Sandler Award Plaque.

D. $1,000 approved by Drosophila Board, for lifetime membership in the GSA and a subscription to Genetics.

V. Finances

A. Outstanding expenses from 1999 award

1. $1,000 award to 99 awardee Terence Murphy.

2. Cost of Sandler Award Plaque ($40) to Bill Sullivan.

B. Expenses from 2000 award

1. $126 shipping costs (Bill Saxton).

2. Cost of Sandler Award Plaque ($40) to Bill Sullivan.

3. $1,000 award to 2000 awardee Bin Chen (if approved by Drosophila Board).

5. REPORT OF THE 2001 PROGRAM COMMITTEE (Mariana Wolfner, Mike Goldberg)

6. REPORT OF THE GSA COORDINATOR (Marsha Ryan)

41^st Annual Drosophila Research Conference

Advance registrations for the 2000 meeting indicate that overall registration numbers will be down slightly from 1999. Total registration in 1999, after deducting cancellations, totaled 1,366. Hotel room rates for singles in 2000 were lower than in 1999, ranging from $115-$127 single or double. Room pickup on peak night at the two conference hotels plus two additional overflow hotels, totals 702, significantly higher than the 674 peak night in Bellevue. This is the highest pick-up on record. Major contributions to increased room pick-up may be due to the diligence of the Pittsburgh Convention & Visitors Bureau Housing office that continued to take reservations and track room reservations until the meeting ends instead of the room block cutoff date of February 14. The other contributing factors include clarity of room type descriptions (spelling out that a quad room is only 2 double beds, not 4 separate beds/rollaways) and the lower room rates being more affordable for single and double occupancy.

The number of exhibits sold this year is the same as last year. Represented are eight commercial companies and one not-for-profit organization in a total of twelve spaces.

Geographic distribution statistics for pre-registrants follow:

2001 - 42^nd Annual Conference - March 21-25 - Washington, DC

Washington, DC and the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel, and the Omni Shoreham Hotel for overflow, were selected and contracted for the 42^nd Drosophila Conference. There will be meeting space rental charges if fewer room pickup falls below 90%. However, since we have only 555 rooms blocked peak night, unless there is a significant drop off in registrations or if a significant number of attendees find other housing on their own, likelihood of falling below this number is not high. Between the two hotels, total peak night rooms blocked are 615--87 rooms fewer than picked up this year. We anticipate fewer rooms will be picked up due to the much higher room rates that will be in the $195-215 single/double per night range (hotel to finalize rates 12 months in advance). Should pick up be higher than anticipated, additional overflow hotels will be sought.

2002 - 43^rd Annual Conference - March 6-10 - Town & Country Hotel, San Diego, California

The Board selected the Town & Country Hotel in San Diego, as the venue for the 2002 conference. Overall, the Town & Country was selected over Tucson for several reasons. These include: meeting space configuration, location and convenience; meeting space on same property as sleeping rooms; no space rental for meeting/poster space; concessions made by the Town & Country to address problems and situations that arose at the 1996 conference; and the addition of convenient, inexpensive access to nearby Old San Diego and downtown San Diego. Room rates guaranteed in the contract range from $135-155 single/double per night.

2003 - 44^th Annual Conference - March 5-9 - Sheraton Chicago Hotel & Towers

Sheraton Chicago contacted the GSA office with an attractive meeting package for 2003. Based primarily upon conference attendees' positive response to two previous conferences held at this property, combined with the hotel's offer to increase meeting space set aside to accommodate posters and larger concurrent sessions, the Board agreed upon the Sheraton as the 2003 site. Though the possibility of inclement weather in early March was considered, the majority of the Board agreed that the risk would be significantly higher than that of other Midwestern cities. Rates will be finalized one year in advance, but will fall in the same range as the 2001 rates in Washington, D.C. These rates represent a real value for a high quality property in Chicago.

7. REPORT OF THE TREASURER (Steve Mount, Steve Wasserman)

a) Annual Drosophila Conference income/expense

2000 ACTUAL

PROJECTIONS 1999

Revenue

Registration $171,600 $191,395

Exhibit Fees (8 @ $700) 8,000 8,000

Mailing Fees 1,500 0

Miscellaneous 400 724

Total Income $181,500 $200,119

Expenditures

Fixed Expenses:

Hotel and Travel-Staff and others 3,000 $ 3,395

Printing and mailing 25,500 32,524

Telephone, fax & FlyBase room computer lines 2,000 1,638

Office Supplies (badges, signs, misc.) 1,500 1,050

Projection/audio-visuals/electrical/sound 31,000 12,796

Space and equipment rental 40,500 41,176

Contracted Services 6,300 3,860

Housing Services 3,500 5,000

Computer Services 1,000 13,652

Insurance Expense 700 769

Salaries/Wages/taxes/benefits 55,900 49,379

Variable Expenses: (Based on 1300 attending)

Catering 42,000 37,223

Credit card/bank fees 4,000 3,794

Miscellaneous Expense 350 0

Total Expenditures $217,250 $206,256

NET REVENUE(EXPENSE) ($35,750) ($6,137)

b) Meeting attendance

Pre-registration by category this year:

Members 435 @ $130 = $56,550

Non-members 192 @ $250 = 48,000

Student Members 161 @ $ 25 = 4,025

Student Nonmembers 250 @ $ 90 = 22,500

Total 1,038 $ 131,075

Pre-registration by category 1999:

Members 450 @ $130 = $58,500

Non-mem 254 @ $235 = 59,690

Stu Mem 63 @ $ 70 = 4,410

Stu Non 375 @ $ 90 = 33,750

Total 1,142 = $156,350

Total registration by category 1999:

Members 450 @ $130 = $58,500

Members on site 94 @ $150 = 14,100

Non-mem 254 @ $235 = 59,690

Non-members on site 49 @ $255 = 12,495

Student Members 63 @ $ 70 = 4,410

Student Members on site 8 @ $100 800

Student Nonmembers 375 @ $ 90 = 33,750

Student Nonmembers on site 64 @ $120 = 7,680

Complementary registrations 9 ________

Total 1,366 $191,425

215 on site registrants in 1999

c) Account balances

1. Drosophila Main Fund
Meeting Year	Net Income	Fund Balance	Excess Over Reserve	# Meeting Attendees
1993	$17,105	$ 25,146	$ 146	1,165
1994	2,800	27,946	2,946	1,222
1995	8,417	36,363	11,363	1,103
1996	15,035	51,398	26,398	1,423
1997	31,663	83,061	58,061	1,382
1998	21,894	104,955	79,955	1,378
1999	(6,053)	98,530	73,530	1,366
2000 (Estimated)	(35,750)	62,780	37,780	1,077+

2. Sandler Fund
Meeting Year	Net Income	Fund Balance	Excess Over Reserve
1993	$1,417	$26,720	$18,720
1994	-1,207	25,513	17,513
1995	1,891	27,404	19,404
1996	1,009	28,413	20,413
1997	1,467	29,880	21,880
1998	1,386	31,266	23,266
1999	894	32,160	24,160

8. BOARD DISCUSSION OF MEETINGS AND FINANCES

a) Account management

The Board discussed the status of the bank accounts. It was decided that although we have carried a substantial balance over the past few years, we cannot continue to lose $35,000 at each meeting and expect to stay solvent. The costs of meetings are going up precipitously, especially costly are the rentals of projection equipment, including digital projectors. It was decided that we need to take measures directed at ensuring that the meetings at least breaking even. The Board discussed offsetting meeting expenses by increasing the registration fees, choosing cheaper venues, and obtaining commercial support (see below).

The bias of the Board has always been to maintain low registration fees, especially for students, and this view was reinforced during the discussions. It is important that this meeting be accessible to as many members of the community as possible. However, it was decided that moderate increases in registration fees may need to be considered in the future, depending on our ability to obtain funds from other sources.

Concerning choosing cheaper venues, the Board discussed the pluses and minuses of this issue. Cheaper venues such as Pittsburgh have not been met with enthusiasm by the community, and the attendance reductions this year reflect that bias. Cities outside the main airline routes also involve increased travel expenses, which would defeat the purpose of encouraging widespread attendance. Cities that are easier and less costly to travel to, such as Chicago, DC, and San Diego are also preferred by the community because these cities tend to have a more lively restaurants and a more exciting cultural atmosphere. The Board directed Marsha Ryan to continue to investigate other, cheaper venues as part of our usual discussion of meeting sites, and the Board will continue to weigh the pros and cons of each site.

b) Commercial support of meetings

For the first time, the Board discussed the possibility of obtaining addition funds for the meeting by encouraging sponsorship by commercial entities. This proposal was met with great enthusiasm by the board, although it was agreed that any sponsorship needed to be in keeping with the scientific nature of the meeting, and that different companies should be given fair and equal treatment. The Board agreed that the following proposals should be pursued: advertisement in the abstract book, sponsorship of coffee breaks, workshops and plenary sessions, and encouraging the participation of more commercial exhibitors. These goals should be pursued by the meeting organizers. However, it is likely that the Board will need to set up a committee whose sole focus will be obtaining commercial sponsorship for the meetings.

9. 2000 BOARD MEMBERSHIP AND ELECTIONS

a) Current Composition

Officers:

Gary Karpen President karpen@ salk.edu

Larry Goldstein Past President lgoldstein@popmail.ucsd.edu

Steve Wasserman President-Elect stevenw@ucsd.edu

Steve Mount Treasurer smount@wam.umd.edu

Regional Representatives:

Paul Lasko Canada Paul_Lasko@maclan.mcgill.ca

John Belote Great Lakes

Hannele Ruohola-Baker Northwest hannele@u.washington.edu

Richard Fehon Southeast rfehon@acpub.duke.edu

Scott Hawley California shawley@netcom.com

Robert Boswell Heartland

Claude Desplan New England

Steve Mount Mid-Atlantic smount@wam.umd.edu

Jeff Simon Midwest simon@biosci.cbs.umn.edu

Ex Officio:

Michael Ashburner Europe ma11@gen.cam.ac.uk

Hugo Bellen SC adv. comm. hbellen@bcm.tmc.edu

Celeste Berg at-large berg@genetics.washington.edu

Kevin Cook Bloomington SC matthewk@indiana.edu

Bill Gelbart FlyBase gelbart@morgan.harvard.edu

Thom Kaufman Bloomington SC kaufman@sunflower.bio.indiana.edu

John Lucchesi at-large lucchesi@biology.emory.edu

Dan Lindsley at-large dlindsley@ucsd.edu

Kathy Matthews* Bloomington SC kcook@bio.indiana.edu

Gerry Rubin BDGP gerry@fruitfly.berkeley.edu

Bill Saxton Sandler Lect. 2000 bsaxton@bio.indiana.edu

Jim Thompson DIS jthompson@ou.edu

Ronny Woodruff Mid-America SC rwoodru@bgnet.bgsu.edu

2000 Meeting Organizers:

Pam Geyer pamela-geyer@uiowa.edu

Lori Wallrath lori-wallrath@uiowa.edu

GSA Representatives:

Elaine Strass Exec. Dir. estrass@genetics.faseb.org

Marsha Ryan Mtg. Coord. mryan@genetics.faseb.org

Other Attendees:

Laurie Tompkins NIH Tompkinl@NIGMS.NIH.GOV

* not in attendance

b) Changes for 2000-2001

Steve Wasserman will be President, Steve Mount will be the Treasurer, and the President-Elect will be elected by a general e-mail election, after the Nominations Committee chooses nominees. The committee will also propose replacements for the departing representatives. Gary Karpen will chair the committee. There was also a strong sentiment to take direct action to increase the participation of females on the Board (see below). The Board also decided to develop a plan for rotating at-large members on and off the Board, in order to better utilize the many talented members of the Drosophila community.

The 2000 Drosophila Board includes:

Officers:

Steve Wasserman President stevenw@ucsd.edu

Gary Karpen Past President karpen@ salk.edu

?????? President-Elect

Steve Mount Treasurer smount@wam.umd.edu

Paul Lasko Canada Paul_Lasko@maclan.mcgill.ca

John Belote Great Lakes

????? Northwest

Richard Fehon Southeast rfehon@acpub.duke.edu

????? California

Robert Boswell Heartland

Claude Desplan New England

????? Mid-Atlantic smount@wam.umd.edu

Jeff Simon Midwest simon@biosci.cbs.umn.edu

Ex Officio:

Michael Ashburner Europe ma11@gen.cam.ac.uk

Hugo Bellen SC adv. comm. hbellen@bcm.tmc.edu

Celeste Berg at-large berg@genetics.washington.edu

Kevin Cook Bloomington SC matthewk@indiana.edu

Bill Gelbart FlyBase gelbart@morgan.harvard.edu

Thom Kaufman Bloomington SC kaufman@sunflower.bio.indiana.edu

John Lucchesi at-large lucchesi@biology.emory.edu

Dan Lindsley* at-large dlindsley@ucsd.edu

Kathy Matthews* Bloomington SC kcook@bio.indiana.edu

Gerry Rubin BDGP gerry@fruitfly.berkeley.edu

Bill Saxton Sandler Lect. 2000 bsaxton@bio.indiana.edu

Jim Thompson DIS jthompson@ou.edu

Ronny Woodruff Mid-America SC rwoodru@bgnet.bgsu.edu

2001 Meeting Organizers:

Mariana Wolfner mfw5@cornell.edu

Mike Goldberg mlg11@cornell.edu

GSA Representatives:

Elaine Strass Exec. Dir. estrass@genetics.faseb.org

Marsha Ryan Mtg. Coord. mryan@genetics.faseb.org

10. REPORT OF STOCK CENTER ADVISORY COMMITTEE (Hugo Bellen)

The board (Hugo Bellen (Chair), Michael Ashburner, Scott Hawley, Norbert Perrimon, Amanda Simcox) is very pleased with the activity of the Stock Center run by Kathy Matthews, Kevin Cook, and Thom Kaufman (see their report!). As reflected by some of the key statistics shown below, the Stock Center is probably one of the most valuable assets of our community.

Total stocks as of 3/14/00 7,907

Added during 1999 1,044

Use during 1999 71,023

Cost recovery

Funding for FY 99/00

NSF $307,660

NIH $100,000

IU $ 38,192

Fees $158,500 (estimated -- $171,360 - 7%)

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

Total $604,352

Endowment

The value of the endowment as of 2/29/00 was $330,686 (this figure reflects 20% appreciation of capital).

Proposal to expand the collection beyond 10,000

The possibility of expanding the collection to accommodate an additional 6,000 P insertions to be produced by the BDGP (a collaboration between G. Rubin, A. Spradling, and H. Bellen) is currently under discussion by the stock center, the advisory committee, NSF and NIH. This set would be composed of P insertions (with or without an obvious mutant phenotype) in or near genes that are not represented in the current BDGP 'lethal' P collection. The stock center would like to add this collection if a satisfactory agreement can be reached among all parties and funding becomes available.

Deficiency/Duplication project

Kevin Cook and Thom Kaufman's proposal to "complete" the deficiency kits by generating deficiencies for the euchromatic regions not currently covered and to begin generating segregating duplications for the X chromosome (allowing the X deficiencies to be more useful) was funded by NIH. Funding began May 1, 1999 and expires April 31, 2003. Progress to date: The project is analyzing existing deletion and X duplication coverage in detail. This work has led to the addition of 51 preexisting deletions to the collection. The survey of duplication coverage led to the development of an "X Chromosome Duplication Kit" containing the fewest duplications needed to provide 88 to 92% X chromosome coverage. The project has been screening for duplications and deletions to fill gaps in coverage. From the 51 screens to date, two gaps in deletion coverage and one gap in duplication coverage have been filled and many aberrations have been isolated but not yet characterized.

Exelixis agreement

The agreement with Exelixis described in last year's report was never finalized.

We are concerned with the funding situation in Europe. We are not well

informed and we hope that Michael Ashburner will tell us what is happening

there.

11. BLOOMINGTON STOCK CENTER REPORT (Kevin Cook, Kathy Matthews, Thom Kaufman)

Total stocks as of 3/15/00 7,907

5,575 Main collection

2,322 P collection

Added during 1999 1,044

Lethal, sterile or visible alleles 853 (462 are P insertion lethal alleles)

GAL4/GAL80/UAS 65

GFP 8

FRT/FLP 42

lacZ 4

Deficiencies 51

Duplications 6

Balancers 13

Marker chromosomes 2

Use during 1999 -- increase compared to 1998 is shown in parentheses

802 (9%) groups received stocks

6,573 (19%) shipments were made

71,023 (43%) subcultures were sent

37% of shipments and stocks went to groups outside the U.S.

98% of stocks went to researchers in academic institutions

Cost recovery

Fee structure for 1999 and 2000

Category Stocks/Shipments Base fee + additional shipping

100+ 1-20 stocks in up to 6 shipments $100 + $8 per shipment over 6

200+ 21-100 stocks in up to 12 shipments $200 + $8 per shipment over 12

400+ 101-250 stocks in up to 12 shipments $400 + $8 per shipment over 12

500+ 251-500 stocks in up to 12 shipments $500 + $8 per shipment over 12

600+ >500 stocks in up to 12 shipments $600 + $8 per shipment over 12

Number and percent of groups in each use category and amount invoiced*

100+ 362 45% $ 31,172

200+ 263 33% $ 51,152

400+ 109 14% $ 47,944

500+ 46 5.7% $ 26,604

600+ 22 2.7% $ 14,488

Total $171,360*

* for 1998 use, 7% of the amount invoiced was never paid

Funding for FY 99/00

NSF $307,660

NIH $100,000

IU $ 38,192

Fees $158,500 (estimated -- $171,360 - 7%)

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

Total $604,352

We are currently in year 1 of a 5-year funding period. We have funds to reach a

collection size of 8,500 by the end of year one and 10,000 by the end of year four.

Endowment

The value of our endowment as of 2/29/00 was $330,686 (this figure reflects 20% appreciation of capital). Due to the larger-than-expected increases in use of the collection over the last two years, user fees have yielded more income than anticipated when our grant proposal was submitted in July of 1998. Our costs associated with that heavier use are also higher, but we hope to have some funds left over from user fees to add to our endowment (the panel that reviewed our proposal recommended that increasing our endowment be given a high priority and NSF and NIH have agreed to allow us to retain any excess funds for this purpose during the current funding period).

The Board raised the question how long can these funds be held, which will be answered by the Stock Center directors in the future.

Proposal to expand the collection beyond 10,000

The possibility of expanding the collection to accommodate an additional 6,000 P insertions to be produced by the BDGP in collaboration with Hugo Bellen is currently under discussion by the stock center, the advisory committee, NSF and NIH. This set would be composed of P insertions (with or without an obvious mutant phenotype) in or near genes that are not represented in the current BDGP 'lethal' P collection. The stock center would like to add this collection if a satisfactory agreement can be reached among all parties and funding becomes available.

Deficiency project

Progress to date: The project is analyzing existing deletion and X duplication coverage in detail. The overlap of preexisting deletions or the existence of gaps between adjacent deletions on chromosomes 2 and 3 has been confirmed experimentally, allowing an accurate count of gaps in coverage. This work has led to the addition of 51 preexisting deletions to the collection, 9 adding additional coverage to the deficiency kits and the rest providing better subdivision of regions already covered. Also, 6 preexisting duplications were added that improve coverage. The survey of duplication coverage led to the development of an "X Chromosome Duplication Kit" containing the fewest duplications needed to provide 88 to 92% X chromosome coverage. The project has been screening for duplications and deletions to fill gaps in coverage. From the 51 screens to date, two gaps in deletion coverage and one gap in duplication coverage have been filled and many aberrations have been isolated but not yet characterized. Once the analysis of existing coverage is complete, screening efforts will be intensified.

Exelixis agreement

The agreement with Exelixis described in last year's report was never finalized (after initiating the discussion and receiving a detailed proposal from us, which we heard informally through Gerry Rubin was acceptable to Exelixis, Exelixis ceased communicating with us for reasons that were never communicated to us). We are not directing users to patent information nor providing stock recipient information to Exelixis.

Advisory Committee - current members

Hugo Bellen (Chair)

Michael Ashburner

Scott Hawley

Norbert Perrimon

Amanda Simcox

12. DIS REPORT ( Jim Thompson)

Volume 82 of Drosophila Information Service was published last summer and included research and technique notes, new mutant descriptions, and a reprint of teaching notes from out-of-print back issues. In addition to the traditional areas of coverage, DIS is actively soliciting articles that describe exercises that can be incorporated into genetics laboratory courses. For the second year, an email call for papers has been distributed to addresses provided by FlyBase, and I thank Kathy Matthews for again facilitating that distribution. A web page is being developed for the journal, and when implemented in the next few weeks, its address will be: http://www.ou.edu/journals/dis. In addition to encouraging Drosophila geneticists to share teaching exercises, a focus this year will be on profiling the programs of regional Drosophila research conferences. Many contributors at these meetings are postdoctoral researchers or graduate students. By publicizing their work as reported in small regional meetings, DIS can help bring their interests and expertise to the attention of a wider audience of research groups. Very few conference organizers have taken the time to mail a copy of their program for inclusion in DIS. Hopefully, members of the Board will help in this effort to promote the work of postdoctoral and graduate students. I predict that the size of the annual issue will be significantly smaller than previous years. This has been a recurring prediction, but it seems that a major article has ultimately been submitted each year. The idea of reprinting important research articles that originally had limited distribution remains attractive, since this can be done essentially free of cost. To order DIS volume 83, the charge will remain unchanged at $12.00 per copy plus $3.00 shipping/handling in the U.S.A., with slightly higher shipping costs to subscribers abroad.

13. BERKELEY GENOME PROJECT REPORT (Gerry Rubin)

Release 1 of the annotated sequence of the D. melanogaster genome will be published in the March 24^th issue of Science and will be available through GenBank and FlyBase. This version still has many gaps and low quality regions and we will devote the remainder of our current grant year (until Oct 31, 2000) improving the quality of the sequence. (Full details will be presented at the workshop on Thursday afternoon.) Working closely with our FlyBase colleagues, we will also be improving the associated annotations.

We are currently negotiating with the NHGRI to revise the goals for the third and final year of our current grant period. These funds were originally awarded to sequence the last third of the genome. Some of these funds will likely be "repossessed" by the NHGRI, but it is also likely that we will be allowed to sequence full-length cDNA clones. This was, after completion of the genomic sequence, the highest priority goal for the fly community as reported to the NIH following the non-mammalian model organisms workshop held at the NIH a little over a year ago (for full text see http://www.nih.gov/science/models/nmm/):

Completion of high quality sequences of full-length cDNA clones corresponding to all genes in the genomic sequence (and their major alternative splice forms) and the assembly of a complete "unigene set" of all major expressed transcripts. The cDNAs should be made available in appropriate vectors in anticipation of their use in proteomic analyses. This "rosetta stone" will be crucial to fully comprehend the range of proteins encoded in the Drosophila genome. This goal can likely be accomplished for $8,000,000 and could be accomplished in 2 years."

We currently have cDNA corresponding to about 6,000 different fly genes and have plans for finding the rest, including sequencing 200,000 more ESTs, but these depend on approval of the NIH of our revised goals. Final approval of revised goals will need to wait until the NHGRI Council meeting in late May.

14. FLYBASE (Bill Gelbart)

The FlyBase project continues to work to provide an up-to-date and robust resource of genomic and genetic information on Drosophila melanogaster and other drosophilids. While continuing our usual data capture and presentation operations, we have had a considerable focus on issues pertaining to three areas:

(1) anticipating the explosion of information on the genome sequence of Drosophila melanogaster, both in terms of the FlyBase responsibility for maintaining and updating these annotations and in terms of how this will change the science that Drosophilists do.

(2) working toward complete integration of the BFD and FlyBase public databases.

(3) developing effective ways to evaluate and redesign the FlyBase www interface as part of the BFD - FlyBase integration effort.

(4) the implementation of a layered controlled vocabulary describing the function, biological role and cellular location of gene products: GO (Gene Ontology).

A brief summary of where we are follows. This will be supplemented by a discussion of the results of the 2.5 day FlyBase Project and Advisory Committee meeting, which will take place in Pittsburgh immediately in advance of the Drosophila Board meeting.

(1) Some of this information is also in the BDGP report from Gerry. The Celera/BDGP collaboration will culminate as you know in publication of the work in the March 24, 2000 issue of Science. At that time, the sequences and their annotations will be made public through the BFD - FlyBase servers as well as through GenBank/EMBL/DDBJ and perhaps other sites. The annotations represent a set of predictions of the structures of CDS's across the assembled genome. These predicted gene models will then be the starting point for FlyBase to automatically re-compute those predictions as BDGP finishes the sequences, and to curate this information by expert review and by integrating experimentally-derived annotation. How to best obtain input from the community into this process of annotation is under active discussion by FlyBase.

(2) We are actively integrating some of our data sets and presenting highly integrated and/or crosslinked views of our data. Areas of highest priority are genomic annotations and transposon insertion data. A subcommittee has been formed to make recommendations on long term integration objectives. Several different models for integration can be considered and we are not yet in a position to choose among these options. Because the integration effort itself will occupy considerable resources, it is important that we take the time to do it right.

(3) We have established a FlyBase Web Design Committee (WDC) with curators from each of the four FlyBase sites to evaluate and where appropriate, recommend redesign of our high level web pages. This committee has worked extremely well together and their work has led to some very good changes in our web site. In addition, the WDC ran a FlyBase survey that was posted not only on FlyBase and the BFD, but also on OMIM, NCBI and MGD. The results of this survey are currently being evaluated, and are available to the Board. The Board proposed that responses should also be solicited by email, as the web-based approach yielded too few responses to get a strong sense of the community opinions.

(4) The GO (Gene Ontology) project is currently a collaboration between members of FlyBase (Michael Ashburner and Suzanna Lewis), SGD and MGD. The idea is to develop a database of controlled terms describing non-sequence level information about gene products, such that biologically related molecules can be organized and retrieved according to function, role and cellular location. A first pass at assigning GO terms to the predicted Celera/BDGP gene products occurred at and subsequent to the November Annotation Jamboree at Celera. FlyBase is now actively using the Gene Ontology both for internal purposes and for making robust crosslinks to other organism databases.

As stated earlier, FlyBase will supplement this report with information about the outcome of our Project and Advisors meeting.

15. NIH SUPPORT FOR COMMUNITY RESOURCES (Laurie Tompkins, Bill Gelbart)

Bill Gelbart:

I had a long talk with Laurie Tompkins about the whitepaper status and her role on the Trans-NIH NonMammalian Model Organism resources committee.

It sounds like things are well under control for her Drosophila subcommittee (that she chairs). The most important of the whitepaper issues have been addressed by NIH, and this workshop will be useful to update some of the others ... sequencing other species in the light of the current technology, thinking about expression pattern in the light of chips, microarrays, etc.

I suggested to Laurie that I and perhaps some other board reps to NIH meet with her subcommittee as a follow-up to the Thursday evening resources workshop. She would like her subcommittee to have "access" to the community through some combination of FlyBase postings and bionet.drosophila announcements. This is of course fine with me.

How the board might encourage national consortia on resources (such as microarray centers) is something that we might talk about at the board meeting.

Laurie Tompkins (NIH):

NIH Process for Considering Support for Genetic and Genomic Resources for Non-Mammalian Models

This document describes NIH's process for considering planned applications for projects whose goal is to develop genetic and genomic resources for non-mammalian model systems. This process will be used for projects that are large (generally greater than $500,000 in direct costs per year) or that require a long-term commitment (such as databases and repositories). Applications for projects that are known to be of interest to specific institutes should be submitted in the standard manner. However, applicants are encouraged to discuss these projects with the appropriate institute staff member.

The process described below is designed (1) to provide guidance to investigators prior to submission of a grant application and (2) to provide a mechanism for determining whether there is sufficient programmatic interest in the proposed project before the investigators prepare and submit an application.

1. A representative of the model organism community should discuss the plan with the NIH contact person (or the NMM committee co-chairs, if there is no contact person).

2. If NIH considers the planning process to be far enough along, the applicants should submit a concept paper to the NIH contact person (or to the NMM committee co-chairs, if there is no contact person). The concept paper must address the following questions:

∑ By what process did the community obtain input and reach a consensus about the priority for the proposed project?

∑ What other sources of support, including non-U.S. sources, exist?

∑ What are the advantages and limitations of the model organism for research purposes, including genome size, tractability for genetic studies, ease of use, generation time, storage of organism or gametes, etc.?

∑ What is the justification for needing the genomic resources now, rather than later, when costs are likely to be lower?

∑ Do the proposed resources exist, or are there plans to develop such resources, outside the U.S.?

∑ What are the unique advantages of having the genomic information of this organism?

∑ What scientific advances will be made possible that otherwise would not, given the current state of the genomic tools?

∑ With as great precision as possible, what is the cost of the project?

∑ What is the duration of the project?

∑ How will resources, such as databases and repositories, be supported after the completion of the project?

∑ How will data and resources generated by this project be made available rapidly and efficiently to the research community?

∑ What genomic resources, including databases and repositories, currently exist?

∑ What is the size of the research community for the organism?

∑ Who will benefit from the improved genomic resources? The immediate community? The broader biomedical research community?

∑ What will be the benefits?

NIH staff have formed working groups to coordinate and share information about genomic activities related to some model organisms. If a working group has been established for a particular model organism, the contact person will distribute the concept paper to that working group. If no working group exists, the contact person will distribute the concept paper to the NMM committee and to its liaisons from other agencies.

∑ If one or more Institutes and Centers (IC's) and/or other agencies express an interest in providing support for the development of the proposed genomic resources, the applicant will be invited to submit a grant application.

∑ If no IC is interested in accepting a formal application, the applicant will be notified.

16. OTHER BUSINESS

a) Status of women in the fly community (Terry Orr-Weaver, Celeste Berg, Pam Geyer, Helen Salz)

There has been serious underrepresentation of female principal investigators on the Board, especially the President position, as well as other high level community projects, such as the Celera jamboree and the panel that attended the Model Organisms. The problem, as I see it, is that this becomes a self-propagating problem, meaning reduced involvement of female Pis in 'high-level' events and meetings perpetuates the perception that there aren't women 'trained' to perform such functions. I therefore asked this group to address the issue of female representation and come up with some practical suggestions. Here is the response:

You asked us to comment on ways to increase the representation and involvement of women in the Drosophila community and to make suggestions to the Drosophila board.

We agree that increased representation of women on the Drosophila board will permit women to have more input into decisions that affect fly research. We think you have received a number of suggestions from other women about mechanisms to increase the number of women on the Drosophila board.

We think, however, that it is essential to recognize that simply providing women with more opportunities to do service functions for the community will not enhance their research efforts. Women do a tremendous amount of service for the Drosophila community, for example look at the number of women who have organized the National meeting in recent years. This service benefits the community, and the visibility of women in these roles does serve as a good example to younger women. The problem is that these service jobs are a sacrifice, they take away from women's research efforts. So we think it is critical that any endeavors to increase the representation of women do not solely add more administrative jobs for them. Women in the fly community need equal access to research information and opportunities-this is what is really critical.

We support your efforts. We urge you to heighten awareness and take steps that will ensure women have access to information, technologies, and reagents in the post-genome era of Drosophila research.

Proposal:

The Nominations Committee should make every effort to maintain adequate female representation among the regional representatives, the President and the Treasurer, board committees, and in any community events. In all cases we should attempt to achieve complete parity (50%), which approximately reflects the composition of the fly community. If there are not enough women currently on the Board to populate committees, we should pick ad hoc representatives from the community at large. The long-term goal is to encourage female participation in all 'high-level' Drosophila business. It is hoped that these strategies will result in being able to approach nominations in a gender-independent fashion, in the not-too-distant future.

The Board heartily approved the institution of measures to increase female participation in the Board and other activities of the Drosophila community. However, the Board favored an approach that was not 'hard-wired' with respect to percentages; instead, the Nominations Committee was strongly encouraged to ensure appropriate representation of women in the nominees.

b) Status of P element license (Larry Goldstein)

Exelixis has not yet produced a final license proposal, despite numerous attempts to complete this task. George Scangos has pledged to bring the language into line with the agreed upon intent.

The Board was not concerned about the absence of an agreement, as the patent will expire in about 2 years. It was decided to let Exelixis dictate the timing, and that we would not continue to push them on this issue.

c) Press release on the completion of the genome

In order to take advantage of press interest in the completion of the genome, we needed to provide a press release from the Board, as representatives of the community. Here is the text of the final release.

THE DROSOPHILA BOARD OF DIRECTORS

41st Annual Drosophila Research Conference

News Release

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Media Contact: Gary Karpen, President, The Drosophila Board of Directors

(412) 281-3700 ext. 2606; karpen@salk.edu

The Drosophila Research Community Thanks

Celera Genomics and the Publicly-Funded Genome Projects for Delivering the Fruitfly Genome Sequence

PITTSBURGH, PENN. March 23, 2000 - The publication and release of the complete DNA sequence of the fruit fly Drosophila in the current issue of Science reports an achievement that will have enormous impact on understanding human biology and disease. Nearly two-thirds of the genes known to cause human disease are present in the Drosophila genome, including genes responsible for birth defects, neurodegeneration, and cancer. These findings demonstrate that basic research using Drosophila has enormous value in the fight against human disease.

This occasion caps a century of ground-breaking discoveries made using Drosophila, several of which were recognized by Nobel prizes. These include the demonstration that radiation causes mutations and the discovery of genes that control the basic body plan of all organisms.

Drosophila has the largest genome sequence produced to date. This daunting project was only accomplished at an accelerated pace because private industry and government funded public efforts collaborated in a true partnership. The Drosophila Board, representing the community of Drosophila researchers, sincerely thanks Celera Genomics, Inc. and the Drosophila Genome Projects for providing this important resource to our research community.

The completion of the Drosophila genome sequence heralds a new era of biomedical discovery. The Drosophila community welcomes this leap forward and the opportunity it affords to advance our understanding of how organisms function and how genetic defects cause disease.

The Drosophila Genome Project is a consortium of the Berkeley Genome Project, European Genome Project, Baylor College of Medicine Human Genome Center, and FlyBase. The Drosophila Board of Directors represents the interests of the international community of Drosophila researchers.

For further information contact :

Dr. Gary Karpen

President of The Drosophila Board of Directors

The Salk Institute

karpen@salk.edu

(858) 453-4100 ext. 1473

INTRODUCTION, APPROVAL OF THE 1999 MINUTES	2:00 - 2:10 PM
MEETINGS AND FINANCES:	2:10 - 3:30
2000 PROGRAM COMMITTEE (Pam Geyer, Lori Wallrath)	2:10 - 2:30
SANDLER LECTURER COMMITTEE (Bill Saxton)	2:30 - 2:35
2001 PROGRAM COMMITTEE (Dave Deitcher)	2:35 - 2:40
GSA COORDINATOR (Marsha Ryan)	2:40 - 3:00
TREASURER (Steve Mount)	3:00 - 3:20
BOARD DISCUSSION OF MEETINGS AND FINANCES	3:20 - 3:35
BOARD MEMBERSHIP AND ELECTIONS	3:35 - 3:45
COMMUNITY RESOURCES:	3:45 - 5:20
STOCK CENTER ADVISORY COMMITTEE (Hugo Bellen)	3:45 - 3:55
BLOOMINGTON STOCK CENTER (Kevin Cook)	3:55 - 4:10
DIS (Jim Thompson)	4:10 - 4:15
BERKELEY GENOME PROJECT (Gerry Rubin)	4:15 - 4:30
FLYBASE (Bill Gelbart)	4:30 - 4:45
NIH SUPPORT FOR COMMUNITY RESOURCES (Bill Gelbart, Laurie Tompkins,)	4:45 - 5:00
BOARD DISCUSSION OF COMMUNITY RESOURCES	5:00 - 5:20
OTHER BUSINESS:	5:20 - 6:00
a) Status of women in the fly community (Terry Orr-Weaver)	5:20 - 5:40
b) Status of P element license (Larry Goldstein)	5:40 - 5:45
c) Press release on the completion of the genome	5:45 - 6:00

March 22, 2000

Doubletree Hotel, Pittsburgh, PA

OTHER BUSINESS:

5:20 - 6:00

II. Areas of Primary Research Interest