An efficient system to fund science: from proposal review to peer-to-peer distributions.

This paper presents a novel model of science funding that exploits the wisdom of the scientific crowd. Each researcher receives an equal, unconditional part of all available science funding on a yearly basis, but is required to individually donate to other scientists a given fraction of all they receive. Science funding thus moves from one scientist to the next in such a way that scientists who receive many donations must also redistribute the most. As the funding circulates through the scientific community it is mathematically expected to converge on a funding distribution favored by the entire scientific community. This is achieved without any proposal submissions or reviews. The model furthermore funds scientists instead of projects, reducing much of the overhead and bias of the present grant peer review system. Model validation using large-scale citation data and funding records over the past 20 years show that the proposed model could yield funding distributions that are similar to those of the NSF and NIH, and the model could potentially be more fair and more equitable. We discuss possible extensions of this approach as well as science policy implications.

Sex-specific expression of alternative transcripts in Drosophila.

BACKGROUND: Many genes produce multiple transcripts due to alternative splicing or utilization of alternative transcription initiation/termination sites. This 'transcriptome expansion' is thought to increase phenotypic complexity by allowing a single locus to produce several functionally distinct proteins. However, sex, genetic and developmental variation in the representation of alternative transcripts has never been examined systematically. Here, we describe a genome-wide analysis of sex-specific expression of alternative transcripts in Drosophila melanogaster. RESULTS: We compared transcript profiles in males and females from eight Drosophila lines (OregonR and 2b, and 6 RIL) using a newly designed 60-mer oligonucleotide microarray that allows us to distinguish a large proportion of alternative transcripts. The new microarray incorporates 7,207 oligonucleotides, satisfying stringent binding and specificity criteria that target both the common and the unique regions of 2,768 multi-transcript genes, as well as 12,912 oligonucleotides that target genes with a single known transcript. We estimate that up to 22% of genes that produce multiple transcripts show a sex-specific bias in the representation of alternative transcripts. Sexual dimorphism in overall transcript abundance was evident for 53% of genes. The X chromosome contains a significantly higher proportion of genes with female-biased transcription than the autosomes. However, genes on the X chromosome are no more likely to have a sexual bias in alternative transcript representation than autosomal genes. CONCLUSION: Widespread sex-specific expression of alternative transcripts in Drosophila suggests that a new level of sexual dimorphism at the molecular level exists.