London

Most collaborations between Israeli and Palestinian scientists have fallen victim to the upsurge of violence that has disrupted the region in recent years. But one surviving partnership — an investigation of the hereditary basis of deafness among people in the region — last month received a welcome boost: a donation of US$100,000 from a $1-million prize scooped by geneticists John Sulston, Sydney Brenner and Robert Waterston.

Karen Avraham (left) and Moien Kana'an hope to recruit new postgraduates to study deafness. Credit: K. AVRAHAM

The research is led by geneticists Karen Avraham, an Israeli at Tel Aviv University, and Moien Kana'an, a Palestinian who works at Bethlehem University on the West Bank. Kana'an says that they have already recruited some 75 Palestinian families for the project, which is aimed at mapping the genes that cause their society to have an unusually high rate of genetic deafness. Avraham hopes that Sulston's donation will allow them to bring in new postgraduate students in October to join Hashem Shahin, a Palestinian PhD student who has worked in her lab since 1998.

The donation comes from the winnings collected by Sulston, Brenner and Waterston after being awarded one of the three Dan David Prizes in 2002. These prizes, set up by Dan David, president of photo-booth operators Photo-Me International, recognize outstanding “scientific, technological, cultural or social impact on our world”. The award's winners are compelled to give 10% of their prize to younger colleagues in their field.

“We've wanted to expand the scheme for years,” Avraham says. It was the political situation rather than a lack of funds that was putting the duo off, she adds, but Sulston's move has persuaded them to take the plunge. “It's a validation of what we're doing and has given us hope,” she says.

Both Avraham and Kana'an stress that their cooperation is for the benefit of science. “The collaboration itself was not a political decision,” Kana'an says. “It started at a scientific grassroots level and has developed from there.” Kana'an is the only Palestinian researcher investigating the problem locally, although several international groups have visited the region to take DNA samples.

One feature of the study is that many of the families recruited are very large and have more than one affected member, making it easier to track common genes that may be responsible. “Very large families are incredibly useful in this type of research,” says Karen Steel, who studies hereditary deafness at the Medical Research Council's Institute of Hearing Research in Nottingham, UK. “They are a very powerful resource for gene mapping.”