Future Directions Workshop: A Forum for Discussion of Community Priorities

 As we all know, ciliates are fascinating research subjects, but how many times have you been
a bit envious of the research tools available to those working with other model organisms, such as
yeast or Drosophila, or been unable to impress a grant review panel with the power of your
favorite system?  The community efforts required to sequence and describe the genomes of
Tetrahymena, Paramecium, and other ciliates have paid huge dividends, but further coordinated
efforts are needed in order for ciliates to continue to function as effective model organisms in
molecular, cellular, and evolutionary biology, ecology and other fields.  On the advice of an
influential NIH program director, we believe it is important for the community to discuss and set
priorities for the development of community resources and prepare a White Paper to which we can
refer as evidence of broad community support for these priorities.  A similar strategy is followed
by the Drosophila community, which puts forward biennial White Papers
(http://flybase.org/static_pages/news/wpapers.html).
 We will begin this discussion at the upcoming FASEB Ciliate Molecular Biology conference in
Saxtons River, VT July 19-24 2009, which we urge all of you to attend.  Even if you can’t make it
to the conference, we value your input and encourage you to join in the ongoing plan
development by email or phone.  Bob Coyne, Mark Winey, and Mike Lynch are coordinating the
afternoon workshop.  Unlike past workshops, formal presentations will be kept to a minimum.
Instead, we want to promote an open discussion of community priorities.  In the end, we hope to
have a rough outline of a White Paper (whether a single document or multiple species-specific
documents will be up for discussion).
 Examples of the types of community resources that may be discussed include: databases,
stock centers, microarrays, clone collections, genetic maps, specialized vectors, proteomic
resources, genomic information from comparative species and natural populations, knockout
collections, RNAi collections, tagged construct collections, and community-based annotation.
Please provide to us your input on the topics you would most like discussed and your priorities for
what would help you advance your research program, attract funding, and help train the next
generation of ciliate biologists.  Please do so BEFORE the conference, so that we may best design a
useful and productive workshop.  Thank you.

Bob Coyne
[log in to unmask]

Mark Winey
[log in to unmask]

Mike Lynch
[log in to unmask]