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It is starting to look like a busy meeting spring.

Today the ECFG 10 announces its early registration deadline. This outstanding meeting will be held in NH Conference Centre Leeuwenhorst in The Netherlands 29 March- 1 April, 2010. 
The 2010 AsperFest 7 has made their first announcement today as well. It will take place immediately preceding the ECFG 10, March 28- 29.

 The Neurospora 2010 meeting has posted it's program online and registration starts in a few days. Neurospora 2010 will take place from April 8-11, 2010.  The FGSC is coordinating this meeting for the first time. Also new at Asilomar, the company that has the contract to operate the conference facility. While some of the people are sure to be the same, we are expecting some changes to the center.

Check out the new FGSC Strain and Plasmid catalog interfaces.

11/20/09

Today Reuters is reporting that there is vomitoxin in corn!

Meanwhile, back at the FGSC, we have been diligently working on the online plasmid catalog interface. Last week I realized that I could use the catalog interface (that we developed late last year) for plasmids. It was only a matter of importing plasmids into the FGSC strain database and then assigning new uses to fields that are already being used for strains. So, where "Linkage group" indicates a chromosome when referring to a fungal strain, it now also holds the size of a plasmid. We may come to regret such dual purposing, but for now, it does get more information into the hands (and computers) of FGSC clients.

11/13/09

Superstition suggests that today, Friday the 13th, should be unlucky. I have not noticed this to be true. In an unrelated matter, UMKC is building a new robotic library storage and retrieval system. The roof if this facility will be green and they have been installing the plants in the last few days. They look like Sedum which are hardy here although the soil boxes seem really rather shallow. It is hard to imagine what might happen to these if the wind gets up, but I guess the engineers know what they are doing. Right?

The FGSC has sent out over 2300 individual strains in 2009 and over 100,000 strains in arrayed sets! Thanks for contributing to our ongoing success as we approach our 50th anniversary.

10/27/09

Today I posted new content in Fungal Genetics Reports #56. Please submit lots of high impact articles there. The future of this historic journal is dependent on people using it to publish their work.

Check out the new strain listing format here: Neurospora strains deposited in 2009. This takes advantage of the new online catalog scripting and allows strains to be easily grouped for presentation online.

10/14/09

It has been a busy several weeks here at UMKC (and elsewhere).

I just completed my mandatory Discrimination and Sexual Harassment training. Prior to that I attended a workshop at the University of Nebraska on their Biofinity project.

I was pleased to note that the Nobel prize in economics included Elinor Ostrom for her work on management of a commons. The FGSC is a good example of a scientific commons. And it is in that regard that I attended a National Academy symposium on developing a microbial commons. It was very interesting in a number of ways as it included scientists, economists, lawyers and even bureaucrats. One of the most interesting was professor Scott Stern from Kellog school of management . He has developed a metric to assess how depositing materials in a collection impacts subsequent use and publication on that material. Not surprisingly, depositing material assures that it is used and the depositor receives over two times as many citations compared to material that is not made publically available.

So send your important stuff to the FGSC and watch the citations to your research pile up!

9/30/09

The annual site visit by the FGSC Advisory Board came off without a hitch. The Board agreed that the FGSC is meeting its goals and adding value to the collection and the research community we serve. We were fortunate to have beautiful weather and our site visit coincided with the 78th Plaza Art Fair. Bird migrations have started with waves of occasionals ahead of each cold front. Yesterday I saw what I am sure was a Northern Waterthrush.

9/24/09

In anticipation of the 2009 FGSC Advisory Board meeting, I was doing a little updating of the FGSC website. One page in particular caught my attention and it is the page where we ask people to cite the FGSC in publications. On that page, we also list publications that cite the FGSC. In the past we would go through articles to find citations to the FGSC. More recently because of the ability to link to journals and even Google Scholar, we have put in online searches rather than comb journal articles. Each approach has its limits and the graph at right  shows the rise in citations per year of the term "FGSC" on Google Scholar.  By comparison, our own compilation for 2002 identified 93 articles that cite the FGSC while the Google Scholar search found 97. I also updated the FGSC publicity page to include a recent interview I gave for AgToday!

 The FGSC hired a new technician. Ms. Bobbie Burgee just finished her BS in Biological Sciences here at UMKC. She was previously a member of the US Armed Services and hails from South Eastern Missouri. Bobbie started on September 1, 2009 and if you order strains from the FGSC you will have an opportunity to become acquainted with her enthusiastic attitude.

9/15/09

Fall is a time of biological diversity here in the middle west. Mushrooms pop up after every rain. Butterflies and birds are migrating, trees are starting to lose their leaves, and insects are maturing, getting ready for winter, and singing at the top of their "lungs."

I've seen Chanterelles, Russula, Chlorophyllum, Suillus and various white-spored lawn-mushrooms. I even saw one that was being parasitized by a yellow mold!
There was a brief fruiting of Coprinus, occasional Apple Cedar Rust, and where lawn clippings pile up, slime molds. If I was more diligent, I would carry my camera with me and stop for more photos. According to my teen aged offspring, however, it is bad enough that I point these things out in front of their peers.

9/11/09

I cannot believe it has been so long since an update. Perhaps it is a reflection of how busy it has been here.
This fall brings significant progress to the Culture Collection world. The USFCC website is updated and we are negotiating with Scientific Societies to take over the administration of USFCC. Meanwhile the USDA/APS ad hoc working group on culture collections has released its action plan for a National Plant Microbe Germplasm System (NPMGS). Finally, the NIH is consolidating its microbial collection resources in one large collection.

Later this fall there are a couple of important meetings relevant to collections. The US National Academy is hosting a symposium on "the Microbial Commons" and an NSF sponsored program is having its workshop on databases for collections and data sharing in Lincoln NE.

Perhaps this is a good time to be involved in collections!

7/27/09

Summer is really here. We have been interviewing for the open technician position and the applicants have been excellent.
Hopefully in a week or so we will be able to welcome the new person to the FGSC. We have interviewed seven people and are asking two back for a second look. Many have experience beyond college and one even has "top secret" clearance! Maybe it is because the rest of the University has a hiring freeze, or maybe it is just the high unemployment rate, but it is a good time to be in the market.

5/27/09

It has been almost a month since posting and a lot has gone on at the FGSC.
Matt, the junior technician has resigned and we will wait until the end of summer to fill his position. If you know any great students who want to work for a year or two before grad-school or med-school, please tell them about the FGSC.

We have distributed sets of Candida deletion mutants, finished up to plate 110 of the Neurospora Knock Out arrayed sets, identified the mutations in rip-1 and png-1, and updated the United States Federation for Culture Collections website,

Driving my handsome son to his club soccer practices has allowed me to spend several early evening hours south of Kansas City where the Blue River crosses the Kansas-Missouri state line. I have used that time to brush up on my local birds, and it has been very productive birding (I also read grant proposals for the JGI community sequencing program). Yesterday was my most recent foray and the most outstanding sightings were a flock of Cedar Waxwings and a Red Bellied Woodpecker. Other birds range from the common to the rare. Of the former I am very confident, but of the latter less so. Overall I have spent about 8 to 10 hours watching birds, but the foliage is getting thicker and places that were easily accessible a few weeks ago are now dense thickets of pokeweed, poison ivy, blackberry brambles and tall grasses. An additional challenge is the growing number of mosquitoes.

Common birds:

Crow, Canada Goose, Starling, American Robin, Cardinal, Redwing Blackbird, Chickadee, Redtail Hawk, Eastern Bluebirds, Barred Owl, Indigo Bunting, Eastern Kingbird, Mallard, Killdeer, Bluejay, Great Blue Heron, Blue Grey Gnatcatcher, Northern Mockingbird, Eastern Medowlark, Grackle, Swallows, Vultures, and various Sparrows

Less common birds:

American Redstart, Eastern Phoebee, Goldfinch, Scissor-tailed Flycatcher, Catbird, House Wren, Cedar Waxwing, Downy Woodpecker, Red-bellied Woodpecker, unidentified hummingbird

Uncommon birds:

Orange Crested Warbler, Yellow Warbler, Hooded Warbler, Solitary Sandpiper, White Breasted Nuthatch, Common Yellowthroat

The bridge over the Blue River is closed and unserviceable, although one can walk across. People use the dead-end as a place to dump old refrigerators. Recently there have been survey stakes placed and maybe the bridge will be rebuild with stimulus package monies. It is complicated by the fact that it crosses the river AND state line.

4/28/09

The USDA Biotechnology Regulatory Service has announced the extension of the comment period relating to their modification of the rules pertaining to the importation, interstate movement, or release of genetically engineered regulated organisms. This means that the rules for sharing knock-out strains of plant pathogenic micro-organisms are being reviewed. Take the opportunity to review the proposed changes and submit your comment (using the "add comment" button) prior to June 29, 2009.

The proposed regulations are explicitely science based and define more clearly how an organism becomes subject to review and emphasize the biology of the organism being genetically engineered. They specificy consider whether the organism causes injury to plants or whether it has been engineered to be more pathogenic to plants. The also make the point that they do not govern "intrastate movements between contained facilities such as laboratories, nor do they govern such activities as creating GE organism (sic) in a contained research laboratory"

Meanwhile, at the FGSC, The University of Missouri has released their video showcasing the FGSC and the School of Biological Sciences.
Check it out on YouTube!

4/1/09

America is named for the 15th century cartographer Amerigo Vespucci. Interestingly, "Amerigo" is the Italian form of the latin name "Emericus."  English is a Germanic language. The German form of "Emericus"  is "Heinrich" which is Anglicized to Henry.

So, Greetings from Henryland!

The 25th Fungal Genetics Conference was a great success. Over 670 posters were presented in a new indoor format. The record attendance of 946 scientists were accommodated by having an audio/video feed into the Chapel so everybody could see the plenary sessions. 27 concurrent sessions and ten ad hoc workshops kept afternoons full. Eric Selker, Barry Scott and Francine Govers were newly elected to the Fungal Genetics Policy Committee and Kathy Borkovich was elected as the new chair of the FGPC. Steve Osmani and Linda Kohn were selected to be the Scientific organizers of the 26th Fungal Genetics Conference.

3/13/09

The USDA is currently holding meetings on revisions to the regulations governing the importation, interstate transport and environmental release of genetically engineered organisms.
This is important for the FGSC community as more and more work with plant pathogens involved directed gene deletion. There is also a public comment period which ends on March 17.

It is important that the fungal genetics community weigh in on this issue. Any time a genetically engineered plant pathogenic fungus is transferred from one state to another, a permit is required.
Please write in to say that rules governing the use of genetically engineered plant pathogenic fungi in the laboratory, and transfer of such strains from one laboratory to another should be liberalized.

2/13/09

There are a couple of unrelated things that I have somehow connected in my mind. 1) Our cat is really stupid. 2) Our cat had a herpes infection in her eye when we adopted her from the shelter. 3) The eye develops from tissue shared with the CNS. 4)  A recent article about the etiology of Alzheimers disease that showed the presence of Herpes Simplex Virus type 1 DNA in amyloid plaques of brains from Alzheimers patients.  Therefore, I have to wonder if she has early onset Alzheimers by virtue of having Herpes in her brain.

2/9/09

The FGSC has taken another step to allow it to better serve the growing community of fungal geneticists by adding knock-out deletion sets of Candida albicans to the collection.

1/30/09

I just returned from the second USDA/APS workshop on developing a National Plant Microbe Germplasm System.
This was a very productive meeting which brought together representitives of academia, industry, the USDA, the NSF, the Smithsonian, and even some
congressional staffers to talk about ways to develop culture collection resources in the US.  The congressional staff were from the office of Representitive Brad Miller (D-NC) who chairs the House Science and Technology Committee Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight. Last October they held a hearing on biobanking and have a general interest in seeing that collections supported by the Federal Government are responsibily managed.

The first workshop in November 2007 set the groundwork for this.

12/22/08

12/16/08

The University of Missouri- Kansas City is a good host for the FGSC.  Our international impact is appreciated and valued.
Because UMKC has had some changes in administration since we moved here in 2004, the FGSC has had a virtual parade of visitors.

2006     Provost          Bruce Bubacz
2006     Chancellor     Guy Bailey
2008     Provost          Bail Hackett
2008     Chancellor     Leo Morton
2008     University of Missouri Public Relations Board

2/09 update
2009      Missouri State Representitive Jason Kander

 

12/2/08

Registration for the 25th Fungal Genetics Conference is well underway. Don't miss the opportunity to be part of this great meeting.

 

11/3/08

Tomorrow is election day here in the US. I will refrain from mentioning anything related to the US election, however.

In preparation for a symposium on working with genetically engineered plant pathogens at the 2009 APS meeting, I came across the following table at the USDA web-site.

In each case, the company in bold at the top has acquired the companies below. The amount of consolidation in the agricultural biotechnology industry is truly staggering.

10/16/08

The FGSC grant from the NSF was renewed, as mentioned last August. I got a chance to see the reviews yesterday and they were pretty good.
One issue they mention is the fact that the old catalog is out dated. Since I joined the FGSC I have been trying to reduce the number of places that each strain was listed. Unfortunately, that meant doing something about the catalog. The old catalog is a historic document and it has grown over the years. There was, however, information about strains built in to the structure of the catalog. For example, the only place where one finds headings " Special Teaching Strains' or 'Mini-chromosome stocks" is in the catalog. To build this information into the new interactive online catalog, we added new fields to the database that allow us to indicate where a strain should be listed. It is still somewhat imperfect, but the new catalog is now online.

10/3/08

It is difficult to believe that it is already October, but all the students here at UMKC are busy with classes and exams, the birds are migrating south, and the trees are even beginning to change colors.

UMKC continues its administrative spasms. The Chancellor, Guy Bailey, has stepped down to take a position closer to home, in Georgia. We have a new Provost in Dr. Gail Hackett who came from the University of Arizona.

Whenever there is a new Administrator here at UMKC they inevitably visit the School of Biological Sciences. Dr. Hackett, who has a background in Psychology and gender, visited the FGSC for a few minutes a week or so ago. Of all the administrators who have come by to see the FGSC, she seemed to understand both what we do and why we would do it.

Good administrators are key to the health of a university and while we are in the midst of a Chancellor search, at least we have a strong and intelligent Provost.

8/29/08

Yesterday I left work to ride my bike home with thunderstorms threatening to catch me. I had checked the radar and thought I had enough time. I rode on the trolley trail, but the storm caught me. Because the trail gets muddy, I turned east to go up into the neighborhoods. They are hillier, but the tree cover and pavement make for an easier ride in the rain. The cloudburst was over in about 3 minutes and I only got partly wet, but apparently other creatures had decided to head for the hills as well. As I reached Wyandotte at 58th St, I saw a young, wet Red Fox.

I have had the pleasure of travelling a bit this summer and it has helped me see the FGSC in different perspectives.

I attended the Society for Industrial Microbiology annual meeting at San Diego and gave a talk in their USFCC session. The topic was 'Specialized Academic Culture Collections as Resources for Industrial Development" and some of other speakers represented mostly smaller collections run by dedicated individuals with specialized interests. H.A. Barton talked about cave micro-organisms and how many will grow if you reduce the sugar in the medium by 100 fold.  K.L. Boundy-Mills showcased the  Phaff Yeast Culture Collection at U.C. Davis and Russell Vreeland of West Chester University of Pennsylvania talked about the Ancient Biomaterials Institute. Just having received an additional five year grant from the US National Science Foundation and with a nearly 50 year history of support, the FGSC seemed like the big kid on the block and I was very proud of being associated with this outstanding resource.

Flash forward a week and on August 19, I visited the USDA National Center for Genetic Resources Preservation at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, Colorado. The NCGRP was having a open-house to commemorate  their 50th anniversary. I went there with the message that there is a growing effort among people in the plant pathology and microbiology communities to develop expanded resources for culture collections in the US. The NCGRP has more back-up capacity than the is taken up by the entire FGSC collection. They have ten times as many accessions as the FGSC and have room for more than double this. They are building for the future and extending their interactions abroad, including with the Svalbard Global Seed Vault.  From this perspective, the FGSC almost looked like a small hobby collection.

8/25/08

Yesterday was the Jackson County Triathlon. It was a beautiful morning at Longview Lake. The image of the sunrise over the lake will carry me through many dark winter swims. There was a flock of Killdeer protesting the invasion of their field by about 500 cars. I had a pretty good result, although when I did the same race 5 years ago, I finished about 13 minutes faster. In 2004, I did the long course.

8/6/08

Yesterday was our primary election here in Missouri. I was volunteering for a candidate for the Missouri House of Representatives in the 44th District.
My appointed task was to stand outside a polling place, respecting the 25 foot 'no-electioneering' perimeter and hand out pamphlets. The campaign had prepared well and I was outfitted in a campaign t-shirt and had a lawn sign and even a life-size cutout of the candidate. When I arrived at my designated time and place, other candidates had posted signs, but I was the only volunteer handing out materials. This did not really surprise me, as the candidate I was supporting was unusually well prepared (it turns out that he won and will be unopposed in the fall, as the other party does not have a candidate). I had been there for about an hour when a rent-a-cop approached me and told me that I had to leave.  I was sure that I was allowed to be where I was, but he 'went from zero to a$$hole in about 2 seconds. He invited me to 'talk to his CEO' and I called our campaign manager on my cell phone and invited the rent-a-cop to talk to her. Whatever she said had no effect and he and another non-uniformed guy were getting mad and yelling at me that I would be arrested for trespassing if I did not leave right away. I pulled up my signs and started to walk to my car to take things away and they increased their yelling, telling me to go the other way. I replied that I was going to my car and would leave as soon as I put my stuff in. The rent-a-cop then kicked over my candidate-cut-out while yelling and gesturing wildly. I drove the 50 meters to where my now damaged candidate-cut-out was lying in the grass. I took it and left the grounds. There were two entrances to the grounds and I parked on a side street. Meanwhile the rent-a-cop and a co-worker destroyed the remaining campaign materials. They taunted me by gestures and about one hour later, came out and told me I could not be adjacent to their property and had to go across the street (a public right of way). They destroyed all the campaign materials that were in the grass between the street and their fence. Because there was no point in remaining at that entrance, I relocated to another entrance and was soon approached by two individuals wearing name badges from the "retirement home." They told me I would have to leave and I pointed out that I was on a public right-of-way. They destroyed all the campaign materials  from the grassy area between the sidewalk and the fence. I remained there until the end of my volunteer shift and then left.

The happy ending is that the candidate I was supporting won with 68% of the vote.

7/10/08

I came across an interesting site today. It is called the Symbiotic Fungi Genome Database.  I found it because I was looking up protocols for DNA
extraction using CTAB. As it turns out, Chaetomium has a persistent brown pigment that co-purifies with genomic DNA.

5/23/08

The North yard project is done. Where once there was a path that cut a small bit of lawn into three unusable patches, now is just a lawn. The perspective is not the same in these pictures, but the progress is easy to see.

It has been a beautiful spring here in Kansas City. The flowers bloomed and then it was cool so they did not fade too quickly.  It also did not rain too much and so the flowers did not get their petals knocked off. Now our lettuce is up, the Dogwood, Dafodils, flowering pears, and Tulips have all come and gone. Mullberry trees are shedding pollen all over the place now. Birds are migrating. We had a Barred Owl in the yard and have seen wrens, flickers, kinglets, vireos and the usual variety of robins, cardinals, grackles,
sparrows, finches, jays, and the everpresent starlings.  We feed the birds and they attract cats, and the cats attract dogs. Its a regular food web in our own little back yard.

In other news, we heard that the FGSC grant from the NSF was re-funded for 3 years. We do not have out budget yet, but it is coming.

I have had the opportunity to do some runs this spring. I started off with the Groundhog run which I was very happy to be accompanied by my beautiful children.
The Groundhog run is a charity for the Children's Therapeutic Learning Center.

A couple weeks later I did the Sabates Eye Centers Trolley Run. It has the distinction of being the fastest 4 mile run in the US and supports the Children's Center for the Visually Impaired.

I used to do more races, and a bunch of triathlons, but in recent years most races gone from being charities to being run by for-profit events management companies.
Without the mantle of being a fund-raiser, it is hard to justify the entry fee and more importantly, to get past the idea that you are not just massaging your ego.

So, I let my membership in USA Triathlon lapse. Nor did I renew my membership in TriKC. I do not really think that I will be missed.