U.S. NSF Plant Genome program

[James E. Rodman]

Dear Plant-Interested Colleagues:
     The second round of competition in the U.S. National Science
Foundation's "Plant Genome Research Program" is now underway. The
new announcement and call for proposals is available from the NSF
website, at:
www.nsf.gov/pubs/1999/nsf9913/nsf9913.htm
which includes information on deadlines and formats and such.
     From the first competition last year, 23 awards were made, for
ca. $30M, including several that incorporate comparative approaches
to wild relatives of crop plants. The list of those first Plant
Genome awards is available from the NSF website, at
www.nsf.gov/bio/pubs/awards/genome98.htm
which provides from the titles an indication of the spectrum of
taxa under study from various genome-level approaches. Additional
awards, for ca. $10M, were made to accelerate the whole-genome
sequencing of Arabidopsis.
     Structural and functional genomics of plants are obviously
alive and well, but so is "evolutionary (or comparative) genomics",
so we encourage plant systematists to join with their genetical and
physiological colleagues in considering the next Plant Genome
Research competition.