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Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG), Germany's university granting agency, has urged the German government to provide an extra DM1 billion (US$530 million) for genome research over the next five years, considerably more than doubling the current level of expenditure.

In a statement published last week, the DFG also proposes that, in order to catch up with other countries such as Britain and France, Germany should create a “national genome initiative” led by the federal science ministry and the rapidly growing biotechnology industry.

It suggests that extra money allocated to bioinformatics be used to set up courses at universities to meet the increasing demand for trained personnel. The DFG also urges the creation of a national committee, headed alternately by representatives of the various areas of genomics, to coordinate the funding of genomic research in Germany.

Despite Germany's “late start” in basic genomics research, the statement,Perspectives on Genome Research, says that the scientific quality of such research is excellent, identifying work on model organisms, microbiology and plant sciences as being particularly strong.

But it points out that, although public funding for such research in Germany has risen, it is still a tenth of that in the United States, where the economic and scientific significance of genome technology was identified much earlier. Fresh money is needed at a time when genomic research is about to enter its next phase, identifying the relevance of genes to the origin of diseases.

At present, public research grants for projects in genomics research in Germany total about DM70 million a year. Of this, DM40 million is reserved for human genome research, with DM5 million for plant genome research, DM7 million for research on microorganisms and DM20 million for technology development.

The DFG suggests that an additional DM400 million be made available for human-genome research and research on model organisms over the next five years. Research on microorganisms and plant sciences should receive DM200 million each, and bioinformatics and technology development DM100 million each.

Such large sums are needed because international competition is becoming fiercer, says the DFG, pointing out that the French government plans to invest an additional US$330 million in genome research over the next three years (see Nature 399, 185; 1999).

Ernst-Ludwig Winnacker, president of the DFG, points out that Germany has a lot of catching up to do in fields such as functional genomics and bioinformatics. “Now that we have collected so much data we want to know what it is good for,” he says.

It is unclear how the DFG's demands could be financed. Public spending in Germany is to be reduced next year by DM30 billion, according to the finance ministry, and the federal budget for science is unlikely to be excluded from cuts. But science minister Edelgard Bulmahn is taking the DFG's proposals seriously, and a task force has been set up by the science ministry to translate them into new funding priorities.