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Japan partially repaired its reputation as a reluctant participant in
international science projects last week when the government announced its
decision to contribute $600 000 to the Genome Data Base in Baltimore. ‘It’s
an important development,’ says Peter Pearson, director of the project.
‘The Japanese have been considered slow to get involved in international
projects such as these and this contribution will help to remedy that impression.’

The Genome Data Base is the linchpin of international efforts in gene
mapping, locating genes on the human chromosomes. Researchers working within
the various national research programmes that make up the human genome project
send their discoveries to the library. In return, they can see the ‘landmarks’
found by others, their exact positions and the probes needed to locate them.

The GDB was established at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in 1990
and has been funded by the US National Institute of Health and the Department
of Energy, which split the annual budget of $3.6 million. Japan will pay
half its contribution in the next few weeks and the rest early next year.

However, the country’s investment will not make it immediately easier
for Japanese scientists to gain access to the database; although there is
a GDB ‘node’ in Tokyo, it is not yet linked to the academic network. This
should happen next year. The domestic network will be run by a new body
called the Japan Information Centre of Science and Technology, and will
be linked to research centres such as the University of Tokyo’s Institute
of Medical Science and the Institute of Physical and Chemical Research.

The Japanese announcement has been delayed by bureaucratic squabbling
over who should control the budget, but Hidekazu Chayama of the Science
and Technology Agency denies that Japan is lagging behind other countries.
‘The US, Japan and European Community countries have agreed guidelines for
this kind of cooperation, and we are starting earlier than our European
counterparts,’ he said. ‘Only the United States and Japan are strongly going
forward on this project.’

Britain has agreed to give £100 000 this year to support the
database, and the Community has promised up to 1 million Ecus ( £700
000).

Kenechi Matsubara of Osaka University said Japan still had a long way
to go. ‘We are up with the front runners, just as we were at the Olympics,
but taking the silver rather than the gold,’ he said. ‘Japan should do more.
The supporting system is not good enough and we need to persuade the policymakers
to contribute more.’