A Life with Yeast Molecular Biology - Prof. Dr. Horst Feldmann

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H. FELDMANN
raised our income per bp by another 2 ECU. I might insert here
that our lab largely had to rely on funds (for staff, equipment, and
consumables) we had to invite from grant-giving institutions.
While, for example, the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG)
in those years was not prepared to subsidize any sequencing
project, the BMFT was open for this type of funding, because they
could expect to gain from novel technical developments and to
draw new insights from initiatives such as the yeast genome
project. Indeed, it was obvious for anyone that the final goal of
this project was much beyond establishing the complete sequence
of a small eukaryote, namely to use this information for
concurrent or subsequent functional analyses. As a fact, the
wealth of information obtained in the yeast genome project
turned out to be extremely useful as a reference against which
sequences of human, animal or plant genes, and those of a
multitude of unicellular organisms under study could be
compared. André has given credit [96] to BMFT’s ‘‘outspoken
support y (without which) y the EC would not have been
engaged in sequencing the yeast genome.’’
While Gertrud Mannhaupt with three technicians took care of
the sequencing and the analysis of particular regions of chromosome
II [104–107] and later those from chromosome XV [108],
Rolf Stucka was providing cosmid clones to the 18 European
sequencing laboratories. We used to travel to the internal
meetings with an 8 meter long detailed map of chromosome II
to co-ordinate the program and to avoid too much overlapping
during sequencing. It is remarkable that Rolf found time to follow
his own projects, one of which was aimed at aspects of sugar
metabolism – in a nice collaboration with Carlos Gancedo from
Madrid [109–112]. Before the sequence of chromosome II had
been solved [113], our lab concentrated on a new theme (see
below). None the less, we eagerly followed the rapid developments
in sequencing the many chromosomes that were left and
brilliantly managed and brought to success by André Goffeau
within the next 2 years [114–116]. As André Goffeau mentioned
[96] he succeeded ‘‘to keep a collaborative spirit in the international
yeast-sequencing community’’ by arranging the full
participation of some American groups (particularly with the
help of Mark Johnston) as well as that of Howard Bussey’s, Bart
Barrell’s, and Peter Philippsen’s groups to the project. The initial
aversion of the American scientific community to engage in an