Additionally, researchers at IUB, Harvard and Cambridge universities and the University of California at Berkeley have received word that their NIH grant request for approximately $20 million to continue funding for FlyBase has been approved. Some $3 million of that money will come directly to IUB, which houses FlyBase, the most comprehensive database of Drosophila (fruit fly) information in the world.

The exact amount of the five-year grant is not yet known because the budget for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has not been approved by Congress and the president. But because the grant proposal received a high rating by NIH reviewers, it is likely the final approved sum will be close to what FlyBase administrators requested. Biologists Thomas Kaufman and Kathy Matthews will oversee IUB’s contributions to the ongoing project.

The public interface of FlyBase is developed and maintained by IUB Drosophila scientists and staff, and the Drosophila DNA sequence information is accessible on the Web.

The Drosophila Genome Research Center will develop, archive and distribute Drosophila genomics resources to researchers in the U.S. and abroad, said Justen Andrews, CGB lab director, who is administering the center with Kaufman and Peter Cherbas.

“DGRC’s addition to an already comprehensive fly research program here will effectively make Bloomington the Drosophila capital of the world,” Andrews said. “The grant also allows us to hire as many as 15 new life sciences staff to broaden and deepen our research and services.”

Geneticists have studied Drosophila species for nearly 100 years — longer than any other model organism in the history of genetics. Scientists have learned a great deal about how Drosophila genes work and interact and, by inference, how human and other organisms’ genes function.

IUB has long been an unofficial nexus for the world’s thousands of Drosophila researchers.

Staff at IU’s Drosophila Stock Center breed, store and distribute novel genetic strains of Drosophila to researchers who need flies for experiments. Kaufman estimated the center sends out approximately 2,000 strains each week from the center’s “living library,” which is the world’s largest clearinghouse of prized Drosophila mutants.

The mutants are crucial to experiments in many fields. Kaufman estimated the center sends out nearly 2,000 strains a week.

Drosophila is one of the most studied groups of model organisms in the world. In 2000-2002, published papers about the insects were authored or co-authored by more than 12,000 different scientists throughout the world, Kaufman said.