The PAG XXI and NRSP-8 Swine Genome meetings were held in San Diego in January 12-16, 2013, in San Diego. Speakers included Eric Perakslis (US FDA), Michael Eisen (UC Berkeley), Daniel Chourrout (Sars Centre, Norway), Greger Larson (Durham U.), Steve Jacobsen (UCLA), Gonçalo Abecasis (U. of Michigan), Michele Morgante (U. of Udine, Italy) and Gary Muehlbauer (U. of Minnesota). The Swine Genome Workshop was all day Saturday January 12 with the morning being a joint session with the Cattle and Sheep Workshop. There were some great talks and thanks go to the session chairs Drs. Jiang and Lunney. Dr. Joan Lunney (USDA/ARS/BARC) will serve as chair in 2014 and Dr. Gary Rohrer (USDA/ARS/MARC) was elected as vice-chair. Please send suggestions to them for next year's meeting. Presentations on the Online Mendelian Inheritance in Animals (OMIA) given at several workshops by OMIA's creator Frank Nicholas at PAG XXI in San Diego in January. The aim was to increase awareness of the potential for OMIA to be curated by anyone from anywhere at any time, and hence for a team of OMIA curators to be developed over time, to ensure OMIA's future. A talk on OMIA was presented to each of the swine/cattle, poultry and horse workshops, and many fruitful discussions were held. As a consequence, new curators have been registered, and an OMIA Support Group has been established in the form of a discussion group that can be joined and accessed at http://www.animalgenome.org/community/omia-support/ . As this report is being written, already one new curator is hard at work, and more will follow. Anyone interested in joining the OMIA team is welcome to contact frank.nicholas@sydney.edu.au . Frank acknowledges the support of the many users and supporters of OMIA, especially Max Rothschild and Ernie Bailey. He is also very grateful to Zhiliang Hu for setting up the discussion-group website for the OMIA Support Group. PAG ASIA had its first meeting in Singapore March 17-20. Over 360 people attended the two and one half day meeting and there were some great plenary talks. The venue was outstanding and all the participants seemed to enjoy the meetings. This year there were three animal based workshops including swine, shrimp and aquaculture. Plans for next year are moving along and more animal workshops are encouraged and suggestions for plenary speakers should be sent to mfrothsc@iastate.edu immediately. The Swine Genome Workshop of PAG Asia linked swine researchers from all over Asia. It was successfully held with five excellent talks and many attendees. The workshop speakers were Heebal Kim, Seoul National University, Korea; Zhiliang Hu, Iowa State University, USA; Mei Yu, Huazhong (Central China) Agricultural University, China; Chankyu Park, Konkuk University, Korea and Tomoko Eguchi-Ogawa, National Institute of Agrobiological Sciences, Japan. Their presentations delivered a wide variety of topics on the swine genome including domestication related genes and biological mechanisms, new development of the swine genome database, extensive characterizations of swine reproduction, MHC and immune genes etc. The workshop was also a great opportunity to connect animal genome scientists and future collaborations in Asia. A workshop for next year is already being planned. (kindly provided by Kwan Suk Kim). The Animal Systems Biology Analysis and Modeling Center (ASBAMC, USDA NIFA sponsored grant) at Dr. Huaijun Zhou's laboratory, in the Department of Animal Science, University of California, Davis, is now offering computational analysis and bioinformatics support to selected projects within the farm animal research community. Selected projects will receive free comprehensive support for a set of cutting-edge computational tools used to generate sophisticated comparative analyses and dynamic pathway/systems-level modeling. Complex multi-perturbation experiments, generating large 'omic' datasets (i.e. microarray, Next-Gen RNA-Seq, and/or proteomic quantification data) across multiple time points are ideally suited for processing through the ASBAMC. For additional information, to submit an application, or to contact the ASBAMC, please visit: http://www.asbamc.org Applications are due May 31, 2013. Sequestration Impacts. Congress extended the Farm bill without funding the mandatory programs, resulting in about 10 percent reduction in National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) funding. In addition due to the failure of Congress to reach a deal on balanced deficit reduction to avoid sequestration, the President was required by law to issue a sequestration order canceling approximately $85 billion in budgetary resources across the Federal government for the remainder of the fiscal year (FY) 2013. From the sequestration bill USDA received 5 percent reduction across the board for all programs including NIFA. Subsequently the senate modified the FY 2013 continuing resolution (CR) and made changes to the sequestration cuts. It is the intent at the National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) and the Department of Agriculture (USDA) to provide clear information about how these budget cuts impact researchers, and in turn what it means for funds provided to the land-grant universities and other partners who benefit from programs administered by NIFA. At this time, USDA is taking every step to mitigate the effects of these cuts, it is possible that your organization's workforce, revenue, and planning processes may be affected. Internal memos indicated that senate bill may have additional 2.5 percent cuts across the board to USDA. Also recent press reports indicate that the Senate bill has modest increases to the NIFA budget especially to its Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI) program http://www.ktts.com/news/199346681.html . The NIFA budget office is still interpreting the CR. For latest information on budget please visit NIFA home page http://nifa.usda.gov . NIFA plans to release Formula Grant Opportunities announcements soon. Thank you for your continued partnership with the USDA and NIFA, and for your cooperation as we work together to manage these challenging circumstances. (kindly provided by Lakshmi Matukumalli.) The swine genome coordinator is always glad to hear from NRSP-8 members and other readers about ways that the coordination effort can be improved or provide resources that are needed. If you have items of general interest to the swine genetics and genomics communities that can be included in this newsletter please share. A new Swine Genome Coordinator is needed starting October 1. Max Rothschild has announced he plans to step down on September 30, 2013 after serving as the Swine Genome Coordinator for 20 years. If you have interest and questions about the position please contact him at mfrothsc@iastate.edu. Upcoming meetings (see: http://www.animalgenome.org/pigs/community/meetings.html)
Max Rothschild U.S. Pig Genome Coordinator 2255 Kildee Hall, Department of Animal Science Iowa State University Ames, Iowa 50011 Phone: 515-294-6202 Fax: 515-294-2401 mfrothsc@iastate.edu http://www.animalgenome.org/pig/
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