.

Pekar, WM Y AUS 28 I991

1325 MASSACHUSETTS AVENUE, N.W.

AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR MICROBIOLOGY Wasuincton, D.C. 20005
TELEPHONE: (202) 737-3600

August 24, 1991

Dr. Joshua Lederberg
Rockefeller University
1230 York Ave

New York, N.Y. 10021

Dear Josh,

The American Society of Microbiology has created an ad hoc Committee
on Microbial Genomics, and I have agreed to serve as Facilitator. You
and I have spoken informally about your participation, and I am
pleased now to confirm your appointment to the committee. A list
giving the membership of the Committee is enclosed. Please check your
entry, make corrections and supply missing information and return to
me. I will then make a comprehensive listing of Committee members and
send it around.

To get us started, I will list items that outgoing President Joan
Bennett and I discussed as matters that could be dealt with by this
committee. Would you kindly react to these points and add any other
matters you think it would be appropriate for this Committee to deal
with. After getting responses, I will combine the suggestions, and
this will define our agenda.

I think we should address the various items by forming groups (like
subcommittees) of people willing to work on each matter, and we should
feel free to involve people in these working groups who are not part
of this committee with but have relevant expertise and interest in the
subject. I would appreciate it if you would let me know which aspects
you are most interested in,

Here are some questions we could address:

Would it be useful for the ASM to play a role as a central collection
point for databases related to microbial genomics? Appropriate
databases might contain information on genetic maps, restriction maps,
2D protein maps, metabolic pathways, ribosome assembly, gene
sequences. What other databases either planned or in existence would
be apprpriate to this collection? Databases on strain collections are
so focussed that it probably doesn't make sense to centralize them,
How about information on pathogens and epidemiology?

Would it be useful for ASM to play a role not only in collecting but
also in disseminating data on microbial genomes? This could be
approached either in printed form as reference books or as electronic
databases? Would CD-ROMs fit these needs? What are the
considerations involved? What sort of repository would be needed? What
sort of support staff? How would updates be managed? What would it
cost to oversee and distribute, and who pays for it?
Can we promote the use of prokaryotic genome projects as models for
the larger studies such as the human genome project? Is there a need
for coordination?

Gene nomenclature. Several people are interested in the possibility
of regularizing bacterial gene nomenclature so that all bacterial
genes for a particular gene product would carry the same or similar
names. There is already close consultation between the curators of
the E. coli and S. typhomurium collections. However, some believe
regularization would create more confusion than it is worth, and point
out how entrenched some of the older terminology is. In any case, it
should be possible to establish guidelines for uniform terminology for
the future names of newly discovered genes. A working group of our
committeee could explore the possibilities. We would want curators of
current bacterial data collections such as Barbara Bachmann from Yale
and Ken Sanderson from Calgary to help out on this.

Please look this over and indicate which item(s) interest you most,
and propose additional items you think would be worthwhile. I look
forward to getting your responses so we can start forming our groups.
As to modus operandi, we plan to work mostly by email and telephone,
including conference calls. However, we do have a modest budget from
ASM, and as needed, working groups could meet, and the committee as a
whole could meet at ASM Headquarters in Washington, D.C., perhaps once
a year.

Thank you very much for being willing to participate, and to help
define pertinent issues,

Sincerely yours,
Mewen

Monica Riley

cc: M. Goldberg
W. Peter

Tash Twill col pn pom, xr rat Yo clecua .
a preilte anh fin the Mol rlogy Brey clopecha ,
f1,