Cracking cell signalling by sharing - not publishing

The AFCS, launched last week, is being supported by a $25 million grant from the US National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) together with backing from private industry. Fifty investigators from twenty universities in North America and the UK will form the core contingent of the research program together with many of the world's cell signalling community who are invited to join the AFCS program. The research effort in the AFCS's six laboratories will concentrate on examining how modular signal pathways interact with each other. In particular, the researchers will focus on two cells that display interesting and important G-protein related phenomena: the B lymphocyte and the cardiac myocyte. Gilman, who was awarded a Nobel Prize in 1994 for his work with G-proteins, will head the project from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas. The ultimate result, suggests Gilman, could be the development of a 'virtual cell', a computer program that would mimic the function of a cell. "A virtual cell would be a wonderful way to understand what the optimal point would be to place a drug to achieve a specific goal in a specific patient in a specific kind of disease," says Gilman.As research from the laboratories is completed and validated by the steering community, new discoveries, findings or theories will be posted onto a 'molecule page' linked to the AFCS website through Internet2 - the new university-based Internet that will allow the rapid transmission of large amounts of information. The AFCS is hoping that researchers will come to see having their results posted on a molecule page as being equivalent to publishing in an academic journal. The investigators and members of AFCS will then communicate through the website, using discussion groups and video conferences to discuss the findings. In posting to the molecule pages, investigators and their universities will instantly relinquish any intellectual property rights they may have for the wo