While the United States took steps to add billions to research budgets, Adrian Tsang, a molecular geneticist at Concordia University in Montreal, worried that his long-time effort to find a biofuel alternative will be compromised with Genome Canada — the only agency in the country that regularly funds large-scale science — receiving no new money in 2009.

Dr. Tsang, who collaborates with Dutch researchers and the U.S. Department of Energy, is developing enzymes from fungi to generate a clean energy source, as well as enzymes that can reduce energy consumption in the manufacturing of pulp and paper.

He hoped to hear in February whether Genome Canada would approve his application for $10-million over four years. But after learning the non-governmental agency was not mentioned in this week's federal budget, Dr. Tsang fears he will be out of luck. "My credibility is on the line, and so is Canada's," he said. "We have our part to keep up."

At the University of Calgary, neurobiologist Samuel Weiss, who last year won a prestigious Gairdner Award for discovering the brain's ability to make new cells, was struggling to understand why the budget offered no new money for research operating grants at Canada's three federal funding agencies — the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Social Science and Humanities Research Council and the National Science and Engineering Research Council. Source.