Last week's announcement of the draft sequence of the human genome has prompted politicians in both Germany and Italy to publish papers on national programmes of genome research that had been gathering dust for many months.

German scientists have welcomed the federal research ministry's plan for a significant increase in support for such research. But their Italian colleagues are dismayed by support for a bill introduced into the country's senate creating a politically controlled oversight committee that would be responsible for all aspects of genome research (see story below ).

Germany came to the genomics game late; the German Human Genome Project (DHGP) was launched, with limited public funds, in only 1996. But research minister Edelgard Bulmahn, who was originally sceptical about the importance of genomics, has been persuaded otherwise, primarily through the persistent efforts of her secretary of state Wolf-Michael Catenhusen.

As a result, the ministry this week published a detailed financing plan for the next four years which envisages an overall 50% increase in project and institutional money. A main aim is to concentrate and coordinate resources. Project money for the DHGP will increase from DM44 million (US$21 million) to DM66 million.

Germany's resource centres, which provide genomics services such as the creation, archiving and distribution of clone libraries for research groups, were set up with temporary funding, and they will now become permanent bodies.

Help at hand: resource centres will be permanent. Credit: DHGP

A series of competitions will be launched to support regional collaboration between industry and academic researchers. One will select three ‘competence’ centres, or networks, which will receive money from a DM100 million fund; this must be matched by money from other sources. The DHGP will receive a further DM50 million to distribute between these centres.

A major effort in microorganism genomics will be launched using DM40 million to support research networks among universities. Money for existing programmes in plant genomics and bioinformatics will be increased by around two-thirds. And a DM134 million fund will support proteomics research, the analysis of protein profiles.

“We're happy,” says Rudi Balling, head of mammalian genetics at the Munich-based GSF national research centre and a member of the DHGP scientific coordinating committee. “Both the money and the psychology are right.” Balling points out that it is the first time that the Social Democrats, the major coalition partner in the government, have made a strong commitment to genomics. “They have always been rather vague, but now it seems they are really ‘outing’ themselves.”

“The size of the announced increase has taken us by surprise,” says Detlev Ganten, president of the Helmholtz Society, the umbrella group for Germany's 16 national research centres. “The research ministry's plans are very close to what the scientific community has been lobbying for.”

Ganten was one of 30 key German scientists who signed a memorandum circulated last week calling for a more concerted effort in support of genome research from both the public and private sectors. The ministry's move will encourage private investment in genomics, he says.

Catenhusen, who has lobbied relentlessly for genomics for more than a decade, is basking in the positive response. “As a politician, I can tell you this programme is an extraordinary success, considering we started from virtually nothing.”

But not all are happy. André Rosenthal, professor of molecular biology at the University of Jena and managing director of the Berlin-based genomics company MetaGen, says that, even with the increase, Germany will still be spending only a third of what the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, Germany's university granting agency, said two years ago was necessary to catch up with the United States.

Moreover, he says, the competence networks and centres are predestined to be based in Berlin, Munich and Heidelberg, since they are intended to build on existing concentrations of research. “It is not real competition — smaller centres will not get a look in,” he complains.