Last year, administrators of the Tennessee Mouse Genome Consortium requested a million dollars from the governor to fund "operational support."

It may seem like a lot of money, but the Consortium represents much more than the latest in rodent—based research.

Memphis—based UT Health Science Center is the leader in the field of mouse genetics, but it is also a model of collaborative research. UTHSC is responsible for the establishment of ground—breaking research consortia such as the Tennessee Mouse Genome project, which in 1998 cobbled together many of the state's best minds from member institutions: the universities of Memphis, Tennessee, East Tennessee State and Vanderbilt, along with Meharry Medical College, Oak Ridge National Laboratory and St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. Steve Schwab, executive dean of UTHSC, says the funding, an indirect complement to recent federal support, will further develop and expand UTHSC's leadership position in experimental translational medicine in the state of Tennessee.

"We see this as a possible start to a much larger program in the genetics of personalized health care," Schwab says.

Schwab considers this especially important for the development of personalized health care—gene—based medical care combined with health information technology that enables physicians to deliver individualized care. The project's specially developed mice populations power the development of experimental translational medicine, which studies genetics in diseases that attack people.

"We can do great research using just human clinical studies and so—called genome—wide association studies," Schwab continues. "But to develop and test cures and drugs, we need much more efficient experimental mouse populations that we can study with greater experimental control." The Tennessee Mouse Genome project, which has been funded through the Department of Defense, provides researchers with a unique population pool that allows the analysis of multiple gene diseases. The state funding, which Schwab's office expects to clear the budgeting process, will help the state become a dominating international competitor in the world of mouse genetics and models. "It's about individualized medicine," says UTHSC's Robert Williams, a member of the project's steering committee, "and it's about experimentalized medicine."

Tennessee is the only state in the country that has pulled together its collective research institutions to collaboratively identify and study genetically based diseases in mice. And the funding will assist recruiting new members and growing the aggregated research pool and research power wielded by the Consortium.

Schwab also expects to begin building a commercial infrastructure around the new program. The Memphis community, namely the Memphis Bioworks Foundation, is behind the economic development of biotechnology.

Ultimately, the very act of involving so many minds in an active statewide collaboration—and getting federal and state funding for it—may prove as valuable to Tennessee's scientific community as the research itself. Meanwhile, the UTHSC—led group and its herd of mice will continue building models, breaking molds and delivering health research with global benefits.