EADGENE

What is EADGENE?

EADGENE (European Animal Disease Genomics Network of Excellence) is a so-called "Network of Excellence" project that commenced in 2004. Networks of Excellence are a particular type of project funding mechanism under the European Union's Sixth Framework Programme, that are intended to draw various research bodies together to share science resources, facilities and expertise, thus focusing the research efforts of scientists who might otherwise work on the same topics separately and reducing duplication of effort. EADGENE's particular research focus is on the genomics of livestock disease caused by pathogens. More details can be found on the EADGENE web site.

Research

The major focus is on host (biology)-pathogen interactions relevant to animal and human health, including Salmonella in pigs and poultry, enterohaemorrhagic Escherichia coli (EHEC) in cattle, mastitis in cattle, goats and sheep, and infectious pancreatic necrosis and Infectious salmon anemia virus infections in salmon. This type of genomics research could assist the development of new or improved therapeutics and vaccines, improved diagnostics and the breeding of farm animals for disease resistance.

The EADGENE mastitis research can provide an example of how this type of collaborative network operates. The mastitis work is performed by various partners working in different species, who come together regularly to share results and ideas. Data sets can be shared between various research institutes prior to publication, which is unusual in modern science where publication rights and intellectual property rights tend to be highly protected. In one published example previously unpublished mastitis microarray data was distributed amongst the various partners and analysed by the preferred statistical methods of each different group in order to compare statistical methods.

Criticism

The ethical aspects of EADGENE has been studied by the Danish Centre for Bioethics and Risk Assessment (the EADGENE partner focussed on ethics), which describes it as a so-called network of excellence, and goes on to say the Network is also confronted by the challenge not to oversell, and to try to be realistic and sincere. This is an issue that is hardly confronted at all in the EADGENE documents.Meanwhile, the Danish Centre for Bioethics and Risk Assessment has taken this forward by organising EADGENE ethical workshops, discussing the relevant ethical issues of EADGENE

Partners

EADGENE consists of 13 member organisations, from 10 European countries:

Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique (INRA), France

Wageningen University (WUR), NL

Animal Science Group Lelystad (ASG-Lelystad), NL within Wageningen University

Institute for Animal Health (IAH), UK

Roslin Institute, UK

University of Aarhus Faculty of Agricultural Sciences (formerly DIAS), Denmark

University of Liège, Belgium

University of Ljubljana, Slovenia

Cordoba University, Spain

Norwegian School of Veterinary Science (NSVS), Norway

Leibniz Institute for Farm Animal Biology (formerly RIBFA), Germany

Parco Tecnologico Padano (PTP), Italy

European Forum of Farm Animal Breeders (EFFAB), NL

EADGENE is a member of CommNet