Undergraduates may soon sequence genomes, thanks to the brainchild of Steven Verhey, an assistant professor in the department of biology at Central Washington University (CWU) in Ellensburg. His idea to create a network of two- and four-year colleges whose sophomores would tackle a genome began when he had students at Evergreen State College sequence part of the carrot mitochondrial genome and the daffodil and red bell pepper plastid genomes. "I wanted to include as many students as possible to sequence an entire genome," explains Verhey. He shared his vision with geneticist Steve Wagner and Steve Stefanides, an assistant professor at Wenatchee Valley College. Their first proposal to the National Science Foundation's Course, Curriculum, and Laboratory Improvement (CCLI) program wasn't funded, but they are trying again, with a different angle. CWU microbiologist Holly Pinkart suggested sequencing Spiroplasma citri, a mycoplasma plant pathogen whose genome is a scant million or so bases. The group hopes that the U.S. Department of Agriculture-NSF Microbial Genome Project will fund lab work, while the CCLI program will support faculty workshops to learn techniques. Over three years, students will grow the organism, extract DNA, run sequencing reactions, and analyze the data. "This is a real--not simulated--research project," Verhey emphasizes. Sequencing the genome of S. citri may have practical benefits too. In the dry valleys of California, leafhoppers spread the pathogen to orange, grapefruit, and tangelo trees, where it causes the small fruits of "stubborn disease." Deciphering the genome sequence may provide clues to pathogenesis, as has been the case with other organisms.
Disclosing Conflicts of Interest
According to studies and anecdotal sources, readers may never know if authors have undisclosed financial or other conflicts of interest in subjects they write about. George Lundberg, a former editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association, and now the editor of online Medscape, addressing the American Society of Hypertension during its annual scientific meeting in San Francisco recently, said, "Medical journal editors, in contrast to a lot of other players in this game, have been able to retain self-government without any laws being passed anywhere as to how they should behave." The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors set up ethical rules, including disclosures of conflicts of interest, at a meeting in Vancouver, B.C., in 1978, but the rules have little effect. "Several thousand journals don't say they follow them," Lundberg said, noting that even JAMA got "badly burned" by an author whose conflict of interest was not disclosed. The resultant exposure of the conflict also adversely affected the author's career. Lundberg's observations are borne out in a recent study by Sheldon Krimsky and L.S. Rothenberg of the University of California, Los Angeles, who found that in 1997, only 16 percent of 1,396 highly ranked scientific and biomedical journals had any conflict of interest policies in place, and nearly 66 percent did not report authors' personal financial interests in the work being published ("Conflict of interest policies in science and medical journals: Editorial practices and author disclosures," Science and Engineering Ethics, 7[2]:205-18, April 2001).
