IU scientists nab fruit fly grant

Researchers at IU-Bloomington, Harvard University, University of California at Berkeley and Cambridge University will receive approximately $20 million from the National Institute of Health in continued funding for their fruit fly database. Located in Bloomington, FlyBase, the most comprehensive database of Drosophila (fruit fly) information available to scientists, will receive around $3 million of the money.\nBiologists Thomas Kaufman and Kathy Matthews will oversee Bloomington's contributions to the ongoing project. Though it shares its services with the researchers and staff at Harvard, Berkeley and Cambridge, the interface of FlyBase is developed and maintained by IU Drosophila scientists and staff. The database is accessible through the Internet and is considered a vital resource to fruit fly scientists.\nClosely tied to the database is the Bloomington Drosophila Stock Center, the world's largest clearinghouse of prized fruit fly mutants. The mutants are important to experiments in genetics, molecular biology, cell biology, developmental biology and evolutionary biology. \nThe exact amount of the five-year grant is yet to be determined because the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has not been approved by Congress and the president. Because the grant proposal received a high rating by the NIH, it is likely the final sum will be close to what researchers requested.\nOther IU personnel listed as contributors to the project are bioinformaticists Don Gilbert, Victor Strelets and Gary Grumbling; curator Anthony DeAngelo; documentation specialist Kimberly Cook; and information technology students Hardik Sheth and Nihar Sheth.