Thursday, August 02, 2007

Some good news about the RI economy

We've heard the tales of woe about the RI economy, and competing claims about how things are going. Here's a bit more of the good news:

Two Rhode Islanders doing cutting-edge work are among those who yesteday received $15 million in grants from the National Human Genome Research Institute, part of the National Institutes of Health. The money will be used to support the development of innovative technologies with the potential of dramatically reducing the cost of DNA sequencing.

From an NIH news release:

DNA sequencing costs have fallen more than 50-fold over the past decade, fueled in large part by tools, technologies and process improvements developed as part of the successful effort to sequence the human genome. However, it still costs as much as $5 million to sequence 3 billion base pairs – the amount of DNA found in the genomes of humans and other mammals.

NHGRI’s near-term goal is to lower the cost of sequencing a mammalian-sized genome to $100,000, allowing researchers to sequence the genomes of hundreds or even thousands of people as part of studies to identify genes that contribute to common, complex diseases. Ultimately, NHGRI’s vision is to cut the cost of whole-genome sequencing to $1,000 or less, which will enable the sequencing of individual genomes as part of routine medical care. The ability to sequence an individual genome cost-effectively could enable health care professionals to tailor diagnosis, treatment and prevention to each person’s unique genetic profile.

Here are the details on the local recepients:

Xinsheng Sean Ling, Ph.D., Brown University, Providence, R.I.

$820,000 (3 years)

Hybridization-Assisted Nanopore DNA Sequencing

Investigating further the potential of nanopore technology, these researchers intend to use solid-state nanopores to detect the location, along a DNA strand, where another short, known DNA sequence attaches by hybridization (base-pairing). By doing this experiment many times with many different short, known sequences, the sequence of long DNA strands would be determined

John S. Oliver, Ph.D., NABsys, Inc., Providence, R.I.

$498,000 (2 years)

Hybridization-Assisted Nanopore Sequencing

This team will work with collaborators at Brown University to develop the biochemical and algorithmic components of a method for sequencing by hybridization. By designing tagged probes and novel reconstruction algorithms, the team expects to get around the resolution limits that have prevented nanopores from being used for sequencing.