Mammalian Genome

Society News Mammalian Genome (1991) 1:2-4

© Springer-Verlag New York Inc. 1991

The International Mammalian Genome Society We announce the formation of an International Mammalian Genome Society to promote and coordinate the experimental genetic study of mammals, including comparative mapping, gene regulation, and molecular genetics. The major purpose of the society will be to provide a more formal mechanism of communication for investigators interested in mammalian genetics and an opportunity for open forums addressing issues that arise from the rapidly expanding amount of information in the field. This society will be open to all investigators for whom mammalian genetics is a central focus, or who use the mouse or other mammals as model systems for studying areas of human biology. The society has three goals. The first is to facilitate the development and maintenance of genetic information databases. The second is to organize meetings that will bring together, collate, integrate, and assess genetic information, construct maps that best represent available information about the organization and structure of mammalian genomes, and disseminate that information rapidly and widely. In this way, the society will help to enhance opportunities for genetic analysis in mammalian model systems and make existing genetic information a more effective and useful tool for non-geneticists. The third goal is to coordinate this development with the comparable efforts now underway for mapping and sequencing the human genome. This focus will underscore the value of model mammalian systems for understanding complex genome organization, and it will expand comparative mapping opportunities for genetic and molecular analyses of complex traits. Close association with a journal of mammalian genetics, Mammalian Genome, will play a major part in achieving these goals.

The society will facilitate the establishment of ad hoc working groups to deal with specific issues. For example, as linkage maps based on DNA probes are established for a chromosome, it would be useful for workers with a particular interest in the chromosome to review the map(s), identify well-spaced, highly informative landmark loci, and arrange a mechanism whereby the recombinant DNA probes defining those loci are readily available as standard reference reagents for further genetic and physical mapping. The group established at the Oxford meeting in 1989 to deal in this way with mouse chromosome 17 is a paradigm; the society will support similar groups as well as groups dealing with other genetic issues beyond mapping. The society will provide continuity and administrative support for planning and fund raising for meetings concerning all aspects of mammalian genetics, including biochemical and molecular genetics as well as genome organization. The society will not displace such well-established and vital groups as the Committee for Standardized Genetic Nomenclature for Mice. Our initial goal is to focus on new issues raised by large-scale analysis of mammalian genomes and, as outlined above, to provide a forum in which such issues can be discussed and brought to the community of scientists interested in mammalian genetics. This proposal has grown out of informal discussions over the past year, and has already attracted widespread support. We now solicit your membership. An application form for this purpose can be found at the back of this issue.

Founding Members Karen Artzt University of Texas Austin, TX, USA

Frank Berger University of South Carolina Columbia, SC, USA

Denise Barlow Institute of Molecular Pathology Vienna, Austria

Edward Birkenmeier The Jackson Laboratory Bar Harbor, ME, USA

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Francois Bonhomme Universit6 de Montpellier France

David Housman Massachusetts Institute of Technology Cambridge, MA, USA

Steve Brown St. Mary's Hospital Medical School London, UK

Jan Klein Max Planck Institute Ttibingen, Germany

Verne Chapman Roswell Park Memorial Institute Buffalo, NY, USA

Christine Kozak National Institutes of Health Bethesda, MD, USA

David Cox University of California San Francisco, CA, USA

Eric Lander Massachusetts Institute of Technology Cambridge, MA, USA

Jean de Grouchy Hopital Necker-Enfants-Malades Paris, France

Hans Lehrach ICRF Laboratories London, England

Peter D'Eustachio NYU Medical Center New York, NY, USA

Nancy Shui-Fong Ma New England Regional Primate Center Southborough, MA, USA

Marshall Edgell University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, NC, USA

Terry Magnuson Case Western Reserve University Cleveland, OH, USA

Eva Eicher The Jackson Laboratory Bar Harbor, ME, USA

Thomas Marr Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Cold Spring Harbor, NY, USA

Marc Fellous Institut Pasteur Paris, France

Gail Martin University of California San Francisco, CA, USA

Kirsten Fischer-Lindahl UTexas Southwestern Medical Center Dallas, TX, USA

Kazuo Moriwaki National Institute of Genetics Mishima, Japan

Jiri Forejt Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences Prague, Czechoslovakia

Joe Nadeau The Jackson Laboratory Bar Harbor, ME, USA

R.E.K. Fournier Fred Hutchison Cancer Research Center Seattle, WA, USA

Steve O'Brien Frederick Cancer Research Center Frederick, MD, USA

Uta Francke Stanford University Medical Center Stanford, CA, USA

Kenneth Paigen The Jackson Laboratory Bar Harbor, ME, USA

Jeffrey Friedman The Rockefeller University New York, NY, USA

Mike Potter National Institutes of Health Bethesda, MD, USA

Roger Ganschow Children's Hospital Medical Center Cincinnati, OH, USA

Roger Reeves Johns Hopkins School of Medicine Baltimore, MD, USA

J.-L. Gu6net Institut Pasteur Paris, France

Eugene Rinchik Oak Ridge National Laboratory TN, USA

Nick Hastie MRC Human Genetics Unit Edinburgh, Scotland

Anatoly Ruvinsky Institute of Cytology & Genetics Novosibirsk, USSR

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Mike Seldin Duke University Medical Center Durham, NC, USA

Grant Sutherland Adelaide Children's Hospital Australia

Oleg Serov Institute of Cytology & Genetics Novosibirsk, USSR

Shirley Tilghman Princeton University Princeton, NJ, USA

Nobuyoshi Shimizu Keio University School of Medicine Tokyo, Japan

Lap-Chee Tsui Hospital for Sick Children Toronto, Canada

Lee M. Silver Princeton University Princeton, N J, USA

Keith Willison Osaka University Osaka, Japan

Jonathan Stoye National Institute for Medical Research, Mill Hill, London, England

Jim Womack Texas A&M University College Station, TX, USA