[CDHC] Porites genome sequence data

[Cheryl Woodley]

Dear CDHC Members,
As you know Dr. Gary Ostrander is spear-heading an effort to have a
coral genome sequenced and is applying for grants to support the
effort.  We have posted several requests for letters of support and I
hope you are responding to Gary, I can't emphasize how important your
contribution is.

There have been some questions about the involvement of commercial
partners in the project and whether sequence data being generated would
be restricted in some way.  Below is Gary's response to those questions.

Cheryl

Colleagues,

There have been some questions raised by some of you about the
availability of the Porities sequence data to the scientific community.
We are writing to assure you that this data will be freely available to
everyone in the community.

If approved by NHGRI, the coral genome will be sequenced by one of the
NHGRI
Centers, which we anticipate will be the new center at TIGR called the
Joint Technology
Center (final funding decisions will be announced before Sept 30).  All
data from
all NHGRI projects at TIGR’s Joint Technology Center will be released
with absolutely no restrictions.  There will be no costs to obtain the
data, and there will be nothing getting in the way of anyone who wants
to download it.  You won't have to click on a license, you won't have to
identify yourself, and you won't have to agree to any restrictive
policies.  You can redistribute the data, publish new findings based on
it, or even sell it if you want!

In our grant application to NHGRI, we emphasized our commitment to free,
unrestricted
release of all genome data AND all analyses of that data done by the
Joint Technology Center, if we are funded.  We will produce genome
assemblies and automated analyses very rapidly and we will release those
immediately to the community.

We cannot emphasize how important it is for us to make it clear to the
coral research community what our intentions are on this data release
issue.  This will be a public resource, publicly funded and intended to
benefit the entire scientific community.  No one will have special
access, not even the center generating the data.

Please feel free to contact us if you have additional questions or
concerns or would like to discuss this matter further.

Gary K. Ostrander               Steven
Salzberg                             Craig Downs
gofish at jhu.edu                   salzberg at tigr.com
craigdowns at envirtue.com

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