Articles

Several key European research facilities in the life sciences are under threat following a decision by EU member states prohibiting the European Commission in Brussels to contribute to laboratory operational costs. Termed a "fiasco" by the editor of Nature, and protested by more than 60 luminaries of European biological science research in a letter to the journal, this action will halve the budget of the European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI; Cambridge, England)—the European counterpart of the U.S. National Center for Biotechnology Information—come this January 1.

Also threatened is the European Mouse Mutant Archive (EMMA), housed in Monterotondo, Italy, whose operation has been supported with grants from EU's Fourth Framework program. When this program ran out of funds last spring, the Italian government took up the slack with the expectation that the facility would receive funding in the next grant cycle. This new ruling would preclude the EMMA from seeking the funding it needs to maintain the facility.

The letter signatories, which include directors of Europe's main bioscience research organizations (European Molecular Biology Laboratory, Wellcome Trust, and several Max Planck Institutes) said the decision is "simply extraordinary," given the large-scale, collaborative nature of modern genetics and genomics research. The correspondents comment on the stark contrast between this move and the "commitment and vision" shown by biology funding agencies in the United States and Japan. They warn that unless a political resolution is found soon, "European research in the biological sciences, and all that flows from it, will suffer."

Readers can add their support to the letter by sending their name, title, and affiliation to the coordinating author: Michael Ashburner, EMBL-EBI, Wellcome Trust Genome Campus, Hinxton, UK. Tel: +44 1223 494648. Fax: +44 1223 494470. Email: infrastructure@gen.cam.ac.uk.

Edited by Laura DeFrancesco