Brazilian researchers had a rare joy on the 1st of May. The science supplement of the newspaper The New York Times, the most prestigious and influential newspaper in the world, had printed on its cover an article from their correspondent Larry Rohter praising the science carried out in Brazil. In the story, the journalist explains that FAPESP is creating a research model for third world countries and that Brazil has, at least in genomics, an efficient system of support to scientific investigation tailored to the necessities of the country.
“The Brazilians are doing science of the highest quality, comparable to the best work of the major sequencing centers in the United States and Europe”, Claire Fraser, President of the Genome Research Institute (TIGR) in Rockville, USA told the NYT. Mr. Rohter recalls that the magazine Nature had already called people’s attention to the Brazilian results in the area of genomics as “a conquest not only scientific but also political.”
The Times states that the success of FAPESP “is only one of various signs of the advance of Brazilian research, in which both the Ministry of Science and Technology and the private sector are beginning to invest”, Mr. Rohter points to the example of the cloning of the calf Vitória, in March of this year, as an important piece of work by the Brazilian Company for Farm Research (Embrapa), and the aeronautic programs which has led to the formation of Embraer, the fourth largest producer of aircraft in the world. (See the complete report in Portuguese at http://watson.fapesp.br/imprensa/24brasil.htm).
Besides The New York Times, another international publication has shown interest for Brazilian science. The April issue of the Agricultural Research, the scientific magazine of the Department of Agriculture of the United States, published an article with the title Creating a Global Network for Agricultural Science. The publication called attention to the agreement between FAPESP and the Agricultural Research Service for the Brazilian sequencing of the genome of the bacteria Xylella fastidiosa which attacks the Californian grapevines.
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