Despite the flowering of scientific excellence in many east Asian countries in recent years, researchers in that part of the world in search of collaborators are often inclined to look right past each other to colleagues in the United States or Europe. The tendency persists despite the geographical convenience of local collaboration, the common scientific and cultural heritage of the region, and the knowledge that major institutions in the United States, in particular, are liable to treat collaborators from abroad as junior partners.

Most countries in east Asia regard themselves as being short of top-level researchers and, like Singapore and Hong Kong, often rely on attracting such researchers from abroad to fill such positions (see News Feature, page 370, and Naturejobs, page 4). But if these nations are to attract such people — and to keep their own best talent — they need to work far more closely with their neighbours.

Since 1997, researchers in the biological sciences have been trying to achieve this through an informal research network, known as the Asia-Pacific International Molecular Biology Network (IMBN). The IMBN's 250 members want to establish a regional equivalent of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO), with its own laboratory and all the trappings of an international, collaborative research institution. But the concept has so far made limited headway, partly because of lack of support from the region's strongest nations.

The kind of scientific collaboration that IMBN members have in mind could proceed now, without waiting for closer political ties between participant nations. Both EMBO and CERN, the European particle physics laboratory, were set up without relying on the European Union or its predecessor organizations.

The key challenge for IBMN is to obtain commitments from the strongest nations in the region — Japan, Australia and Singapore — in order to build the project's momentum. Global experience suggests that collaboration cannot occur without top-level political commitment from national governments. Officials in Singapore say that it may be prepared to match any funds forthcoming from Japan, although the Japanese government has yet to fully embrace the concept.

But Japan, arguably, has more to gain from the project than anybody else. By supporting it, Japan could show regional leadership at low diplomatic risk and relatively little financial cost. The project would also help Japan to cultivate the international outlook that its scientific community has struggled to achieve. Additionally, an efficient Asian molecular-biology laboratory could provide a badly needed voice for the region's biologists. They may otherwise find themselves unheard in international discussions, where their European colleagues are represented by EMBO and their American ones by the National Institutes of Health.

In Europe, CERN and EMBO have shown the importance of formal regional cooperation, particularly in providing a counterweight to the United States. East Asia could make similar gains by actively exploring the options for regional collaboration in molecular biology.