The history of MGI (by Akihiro Shima, the Speaker of MGI)

The origin of the present Medaka Genome Initiative (MGI) had germinated in 1993 when "First Medaka course: In-vivo analysis of gene expression " was organized by Manfred Schartl and implemented in Biocenter, Wuerzburg, Germany, February 14-19, 1993 under the financial support of the European Communities. This enterprise provided for the first time a forum where medaka people and zebrafish people got together to exchange their outcomes, materials, methods, and ideas and to instruct 16 "students" (primarily post-docs) the advantages of each of the two fish models. The invited speakers and instructors were; Alexandra Belayew, Benzion Cavari, Daniel Chourrout, Wolfgang Driever, Kenjiro Ozato, Dennis Powers, Akihiro Shima, Monte Westerfield and Joachim Wittbrodt with members of the Biocenter including Joachim Altschmied, Yunhan Hong, Manfred Schartl and Christoph Winkler.

This enterprise was (and has been ) so successful in initiating and promoting collaborations not only "intraspecies" but also "interspecies" that the (first) EMBO Practical Course on Medaka and Zebrafish Development was granted by the EMBO and implemented in Biocenter, Wuerzburg, February 26- March 6, 1996. The organizers were: Wolfgang Driever, Manfred Schartl, Akihiro Shima and Christoph Winkler. The speakers and instructors included Jose Campos-Ortega, Wolfgang Driever, Yunhan Hong, Nancy Hopkins, Don Kane, Randall Moon, Mary Mullins, Manfred Schartl, Stefan Schulte-Merker, Akihiro Shima, Bernard Thisse, Yuko Wakamatsu, Monte Westerfield, Christoph Winkler and Joachim Wittbrodt. Sixteen "students" were admitted to the course.

This was further followed by the EMBO Practical Course on Development, Genetics, and Genomics of Zebrafish and Medaka, held during March 20-29, 1998 in Freiburg, Germany. The organizers were; Wolfgang Driever, Manfred Schartl, Akihiro Shima and Monte Westerfield. The speakers and instructors were: Wolfgang Driever, Pascal Haffter, Matthias Hammerschmidt, Hiroshi Hori, Nigel Holder, Yunhan Hong, Don Kane, Dirk Meyer, Hiroshi Mitani, Stephan Neuhauss, Franceso Pelegri, John Postlethwait, Erez Raz, Manfred Schartl, Akihiro Shima, Didier Stainier, Bernard Thisse, Monte Westerfield, Christoph Winkler and Joachim Wittbrodt.

The next one will be coming up in July 2002 in EMBL, Heidelberg. (A supplementary note : The 3rd EMBO Practical Course on Medaka and Zebrafish was successfully implemented during 21-31 July, 2002 in EMBL, Heidelberg, being organized by Jochen Wittbrodt, Felix Loosli, Wolfgang Driever, Manfred Schartl, Akihiro Shima and Monte Westerfield, under the title of "Molecular and Genetic Tools for the Analysis of Medaka and Zebrafish Development":(http://www.embo.org/publications/annual_report_03.pdf).

Stemming from and soon after the first meeting in 1993 the collaboration among the then lonely Medaka voyagers, AS, MS, DC and JW, has taken concrete shape by exchanging materials, unpublished results, and ideas. At that time there had been some sort of mood that zebrafish was far more promising and attractive as a new model organism than Medaka. In fact there was no denying the fact that the speed in the increase in number of researchers engaged in zebrafish research and the speed of the accumulation of knowledge about zebrafish were far faster than those about Medaka. These situations were the very reason why those the then lonely Medaka voyagers almost spontaneously formed a coalition to work together by sharing the common purpose to develop Medaka as a new model organism, whatever were the understanding among people about "model organism."

In 1999 this coalition became more substantial when JW moved in EMBL and a project led by AS on the Medaka genome was approved by the Japanese government as a Priority Area #813. At the same time, the developmental mutant group of ERATO Kondoh Differentiation Signaling Project (project leader; Hisato Kondoh, group leader; Makoto Furutani-Seiki) started working on a large-scale mutagenesis screen in Medaka. The coalition body was almost naturally named by MS, AS and JW as the Medaka Genome Initiative (MGI) and the first draft of the data and material exchange network was suggested by JW (April 2000) and discussed at the ERATO project in Kyoto. Some of the early contributions from the member laboratories to the MGI that have been equally shared by all members of the MGI and thus have strengthened the body of the MGI include production of the Medaka linkage map as the first step towards a whole genome approach, preparation of the Medaka Radiation hybrid panel, establishment of conditions for systematic germ-cell mutagenesis, and large and small scale mutagenesis screens that form the basis for the functional genomics.

The basic philosophy of the MGI has been settled as follows in the latest review by JW, AS, and MS (Medaka - A model organism from the Far East, Nature Reviews Genetics Volume 3, pp.53-64, 2002).

"--. To explore systematically these differences between medaka and zebrafish, a medaka genome project has been initiated. A genome project is much more than whole-genome sequencing - it is a coordinated generation of resources that contribute to our understanding of how a genome works. This philosophy has been taken up by some laboratories of the medaka community. The Medaka Genome Initiative is based on genetic and physical mapping resources that have already been published. Laboratories that are part of this initiative collaborate to physically and computationally interconnect the resources. ----."