MINUTES First Meeting of the Executive Committee of HUGO 15 February 1989, 0900-1700hrs ICRF, 44 Lincoln's Inn Fields, London In attendance: Walter Bodmer - Vice-President Charles Cantor - Executive Committee member Malcolm Ferguson-Smith - Executive Committee member Kenichi Matsubara - Vice President Victor McKusick - President Lennart Philipson - Executive Committee member Thomas Shows - Standing in for Frank Ruddle John Tooze - Secretary Bronwen Loder - Assistant to Walter Bodmer Joanna Strayer - Assistant to Victor McKusick Absent from meeting: Jean Dausset - Vice-President Walter Gilbert - Treasurer Leroy Hood - Executive Committee member Frank Ruddle - Executive Committee member I. Pro Table of Organization of HUGO: Discussion on the proposed table of organization for HUGO resulted in the following conclusions: The membership of HUGO will constitute the General Assembly, the supreme body of HUGO, the total membership of which will not be specified and will be encouraged to grow. The General Assembly will nominate and elect two-thirds of the members of the Council. Term of election to the Council will be 3 years. Councilors will be eligible for re-election, but may serve only 2 consecutive terms. Until January 1, 1990, the Council will consist of the present Executive Committee -- less the Secretary and Treasurer (9 members). Six more members will be elected to the Council in the general election in 1989, and thereafter 3 more members will be co-opted by these 15, bringing the total to 18. Each year thereafter, one-third (6) of the Council will be replaced. The General Assembly will elect 4 members and the Council will co-opt 2 members. (Initially, the terms of the Councilors, either 1, 2, or 3 years, will determined by lot.) The Council will appoint a Secretary and Treasurer for terms which may exceed 3 years. These offices will not have voting status, and the appointments may be made from outside the Council or General Assembly. The Council will elect officers --President and 3 Vice-Presidents. The Vice-Presidents' terms will be staggered, one rotating off each year. (At the first election of Vice-Presidents, it will be determined by lot which Vice-President will hold a 1, 2, or 3 year term.) It was decided that 10 will represent a quorum of the 18 member Council. Membership in the Council will be by election or co-option, and there will be no restrictions or specifications on who shall be co-opted. Merit of the individual will be the primary criterion. There will be no fee for membership in HUGO. IL. Incorporation of HUGO: A consensus draft of the Articles and By-laws of HUGO was prepared. The draft of 13 January 1989 was reviewed page by page. Global language changes in the draft were needed to reflect the organizational structure described above. Changes to the Articles included: - clarification of Article 3, the purposes and plans for implementation; - removal of all statements referring to membership dues; - modifying Articles 4, 16, 17, 18, and 20 to reflect the organizational structure. There was an agreement to keep the specificity of the Articles at a minimum, to provide for future flexibility. Changes to the By-Laws included: - clarification of the nomination and election process in Articles 1 and 2.4, including the decision to leave June 15th as the deadline for receiving nominations. - reducing from 6 to 4 months, the time before the meeting that the agenda must be sent to the General Assembly (Article 3.2); - increasing from 5 to 6 the number of Councilors needed to request a meeting of the Council (Article 7.2); - a decision not to provide substitutes for Councilors unable to attend meetings; - valid deliberation of the Council requires 10 members to be present (Article 8.1); - Article 11 should reference Article 17, not Article 13. The Secretary, John Tooze, will check with the lawyers on several legal terms including the French translation of "genome". [The correct term is le génome.] He will also press to have HUGO incorporated by the time of the projected meeting in Cold Spring Harbor on April 26-30. III, Finance: Victor McKusick reported that James Watson said that the NIH may be in a position to contribute 1/2 million dollars per year for 3 years, providing there is similar support from other nations. He also reported that HUGO currently has $51,000 in hand from private U.S. foundations and corporations and $30,000 more promised by Wesley Foundation. UNESCO has also promised $10,000. John Tooze iterated that European funding will be forthcoming once HUGO is incorporated. This was especially in reference to the promise of $200,000 from the Italian government. Walter Bodmer reiterated ICRF's promise of £20-25,000. He felt that other organizations in the UK would follow suit. Kenichi Matsubara reported that the Human Frontiers Program in Japan is government funding only and is ear-marked for grants and training grants. The Steering committee of the Program may be able to set aside some money for HUGO, but this will need to be decided over the next few months. There is also a large oil company in Japan which might be willing to donate money (~$100,000) ‘to HUGO if it can be ear-marked for a fellowship program in its name. Tom Shows reported that certain societies might be willing to support meetings or workshops if they could do so in an indirect fashion. HUGO could function as a broker for distributing "ear- marked" money . As Walter Gilbert has resigned as treasurer, the Council will try to recruit a distinguished person with connections and previous fund raising experience for the office of Treasurer. The participants of this meeting will try to find such a person as soon as possible. Suggestions should be directed to Victor McKusick. The Council will select a Council member to work with the Treasurer as Chairman of the Finance Committee. IV. _ Scientific Program: A primary goal should be to stimulate international collaboration in the physical mapping to parallel HGM activities. The physical mapping and genetic mapping should thus be integrated. To this end HUGO should support and encourage such a collaboration but should not run it. This area needs worldwide collaboration especially with regards to databases. The development of reference panels of clone libraries (cosmids and YACs) comparable to the CEPH families will be important. These can form a common base on which to collect information on overlap by any desired technique and material to map any cloned sequence. Collaborators would thus be able to receive the common libraries and share information on them. In the US, meetings have been set up to start to address concerns of nomenclature (jointly sponsored by the DOE, NIH, HHMI) and databases (sponsored by the NIH and DOE, separately). At this point HUGO should request having 2 representatives at each meeting. In the future, HUGO should take the initiative to set up such meetings. The dates are not yet set for the database meetings. Charles Cantor is involved in organizing the DOE meeting and will follow-up on the NIH meeting. He will forward the information to Lennart Philipson. It was felt that it would be useful for representatives of HUGO to be present at the nomenclature meeting in Bethesda, April 13 and 14, 1989. Possible representatives include: Francis Collins (Ann Arbor), Yuji Kohara (Cambridge University), Jean-Louis Mandel (Strasbourg), John Sulston (MRC, Cambridge), and Cassandra Smith (New York). Irene Eckstrand is organizing the workshop and Tom Shows has already been invited to attend. Two sub-committees were set up. One on physical mapping chaired by Charles Cantor and one on databases to be organized by Lennart Philipson, who will co-opt colleagues for their respective committees. Make-up of these committees should take into consideration regional Vv. balance. Later, it may be necessary to set up a nomenclature committee. These committees need to work closely together. HUGO's relationship with the Human and Mouse Gene Mapping Workshops will be a positive one. It is not appropriate now for HUGO to "take over" organizing or funding these meetings as the Workshops may change greatly over the next couple of years. Separate identities would provide greater flexibility. Offices for HUGO: Walter Bodmer said the ICRF could provide accommodations for an office for HUGO in London. Victor McKusick said that HHMI has provided space in the Cloisters in Bethesda for a North American office of HUGO. Kenichi Matsubara said that Japan is not yet ready to commit space and money yet. A logical site, however, would be the National Institute of Genetics in Mishima. Shimizu will be the official representative. GENOMICS: Logos: GENOMICS was considered for the official organ for HUGO. This might prove a problem because of the proprietary nature of the journal. Victor McKusick (co-editor of the journal) will talk again with the publisher to try to work out profit sharing, co-ownership, or future transfer of ownership of the journal. Several logos designed by Adler & Schwartz in Baltimore were circulated. It was decided to obtain additional designs from a graphics designer on retainer with the ICRF. VI, Membership: Vil. I As decided at Montreux, the Executive Committee voted in the fall of 1988 on the nominees proposed by the Founding Council, and the results from this balloting were given. The ballots included over 350 nominees plus 8 write-ins. All 11 members of the Executive Committee voted. It was decided to elect all persons who received a majority of votes (6 or more). In addition, 12 persons were selected from among nominees receiving fewer votes to even out geographical imbalances. Care was taken, however, to ensure that these people were of suitable scientific standing. The total membership in HUGO stands at 218, including the 42 members of the Founding Council. Geographical representation is given in Appendix I. In the future, the membership of HUGO will not be limited to specific numbers, but will be selected by stringent criteria which will take into account number of votes, geographical distribution, discipline, and professional achievements. The Council will annually decide the number of additional members to be elected. It was decided that care should be taken not to exclude the underdeveloped countries from participation in HUGO. A fellowship training program would be the starting point. Care will also be taken to ensure open access to databases. UNESCO has an interest in the genome effort and in HUGO, and it was agreed that HUGO would welcome their support provided there were "no strings attached". Walter Bodmer pointed out that since the United States and United Kingdom are not members of UNESCO, direct involvement with UNESCO should be limited and at the discretion of HUGO. As far too few of the Founding Council would be able to attend a meeting in Moscow in June and given the relatively short notice, it was decided not to have this meeting. HUGO will, however, strive to organize a meeting there in the near future. Furthermore, no harm was seen in HUGO members' visiting Moscow in June to plan such a meeting. Integrating the databases with those in the USSR will be a problem because of hardware incompatibilities. ICSU (International Council of Scientific Unions) meeting in Lisbon. HUGO will not appoint a representative now, but wait until the appropriate time after incorporation. Future Meetings: The next meeting of the Council will be held during the Symposium on Genome Mapping and Sequencing in Cold Spring Harbor, April 26-30, 1989. Many of the physical mappers will be there. At that time there should be a press release and perhaps a press conference concerning HUGO. HHMI has offered to sponsor a meeting of the Executive Committee of HUGO in New Haven in conjunction with HGM10 (June 11-17, 1989). The best date within this time for those attending this meeting was June 13th. Tom Shows will relay this information to Frank Ruddle. HUGO is co-sponsoring with SCIENCE a public and general scientific informational conference on the Human Genome Project in October in San Diego. Daniel Koshland and Charles Cantor are the organizers. VUL. Other Business: Frank Ruddle requested funding from HUGO for HGM10. This is not possible at this time. Mary Lyon also requested funding from HUGO for the Mouse Gene Mapping Workshop. This is also not possible at this time. HHMI is sponsoring an informatics meeting in March 13,14, 1989 in London. This meeting is largely to discuss getting HGML under a relational database such as Sybase or Oracle for use as the HGM workshops database. Malcolm Ferguson-Smith expressed concern about patents limiting the open use of new technology, in particular PCR. Bronwen Loder will look into this matter. The influence HUGO can have in such matters in the future is unclear, but it is an area of legitimate interest and concern to HUGO. Australia Austria Belgium Canada Denmark East Germany Finland France Greece ° Ireland Israel Italy Japan Norway South Africa Spain Sweden Switzerland The Netherlands United Kingdom USA USSR West Germany TOTAL — _ RB NN ee Oe BN ON eNO —_ — QD w WOO Bm We bh oul 218 Appendix I Representation by Country