News: Wallaby genome project to go ahead

The wallaby genome project is poised to go ahead thanks to a last minute injection of $3 million into the project by the Victorian State Government.

The announcement came in the nick of time for the Australian Genome Research Facility and the ARC Centre for Kangaroo Genomics, which have been trying to raise $6 million to fund half of the estimated $12 million cost of sequencing the marsupial genome in a joint effort with the US NIH's National Human Genome Research Institute.

The Victorian government originally offered to put $1.5 million into the project, with the expectation that others would also contribute. But the lack of financial support from the other governments meant that the project was in danger of collapsing, so a further $3 million was allocated to support it.

Along with $1 million funding coming from the AGRF itself, as well as a $500,000 in kind donation from Applied Biosystems, the project now has enough to match the $6 million contributed by the NIH.

"I'm just speechless, I'm so surprised that it's really going to happen," said AGRF director Dr Sue Forrest, who has been campaigning for funding for the project from a variety of sources including state and Federal governments and philanthropic organisations.

"There is fantastic research on the tammar wallaby going on around the country and this will be the icing on the cake."

In addition to the ability to compare the wallaby genome with the opossum genome chosen by the NIH as its major marsupial sequencing project and other mammalian genomes, researchers believe that the wallaby sequence will provide valuable information on the genetic control of lactation and milk composition, reproduction, and even spinal cord regeneration.

"Unlocking the secrets of these novel genomes could lead to better milk production in cows, novel antibiotics, and treatments for such diseases as cancer and spinal cord damage in humans, and mad cow disease in cattle," said Victorian Innovation Minister John Brumby in a statement announcing the funding.

"Not only will the information be invaluable to health and agricultural research, the project is also a fantastic opportunity for Australian scientists to build relationships with the NIH - one of the largest and most influential medical research agencies in the world."

Forrest said that another $3-4 million would be required to do the sequencing project justice, which she hopes to get via philanthropic donations and grants. The group had until December to raise the remainder, she said.

As far as the project itself goes, the AGRF hopes to get construction of the libraries started by the beginning of the second half of the year, and expects it to take 2-3 years for a full sequence to be achieved. But even in the short term, Forrest said, sequencing data on regions of interest will be made available to researchers.

Prof Jenny Graves, director of the ARC Centre for Kangaroo Genome Research, said that the Centre would work to make a detailed map of the genome.

"We will be in pole position for using the sequence as it is revealed, enabling us to put all the bits of sequence together so we can find genes and compare them with their human counterparts. This will help us better understand human genes, and provide information on diseases and drugs," she said in a statement.

But just as importantly, the project gives Australia an opportunity to participate in a major sequencing project on a scale not previously attempted in this country, Forrest said.

"This is what being a major national research facility is all about," Forrest said. "It's big science that everyone can understand."