Coordination of the multinational Arabidopsis functional genomics research

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In the post-sequencing era of Arabidopsis research, the effort to understand the function of each and every one of the 26,000 genes is expanding rapidly on a global scale, involving many more countries and laboratories that were not originally part of the more focused sequencing efforts. In order to foster coordination of all of these worldwide functional genomics efforts, scientists have called for strengthening the Multinational Science Steering Committee (MSSC) that was established in 1990 for the purpose of coordinating the Multinational Coordinated Arabidopsis thaliana Genome Research Project. As a means to accomplish this goal, the North American Science Steering Committee for the Arabidopsis genome research project will employ and supervise a fulltime coordinator who would act as a reliable conduit for communications between the MSSC and the research community. Some of the specific duties of this person include: (1) functioning as the executive secretary for the MSSC, (2) together with TAIR (the Arabidopsis Information Resource), develop, maintain and update a website to inform the research community about various large-scale Arabidopsis functional genomics research activities, and (3) being the production editor of an annual progress report and other documents that the MSSC produces. This coordinator is expected to visit major project sites worldwide and communicate the findings to the MSSC. This award will provide two years of funding to test the effectiveness of such a person in coordinating the global Arabidopsis functional genomics activities. Two members of the North American committee serves on the MSSC and will be responsible for monitoring the activities of the coordinator.