NHGRI Technology Development Coordination
Purpose & Goals
Advances in genomic technologies and methods have facilitated research that is producing significant insights into biology and disease. To further these advances, NHGRI supports the Genome Technology program, which aims to accelerate innovation, development, and early dissemination of genomic technologies. The development of completely novel approaches and the refinement of current technologies to achieve orders-of-magnitude improvements are foundational goals of the program. With these goals in mind, the Genome Technology program consists of a growing set of interrelated efforts that enable novel and refined technologies to proceed through discovery and development, towards commercialization and clinical utilization.
Nucleic Acid Sequencing Technology Development
The goal of this initiative is to develop new technologies and improve the quality and efficiency of DNA sequencing and direct RNA sequencing through the support of approaches and instrumentation that will significantly advance the field of genomics.
Genomic Technology Development
This initiative seeks to catalyze the development and advancement of new technologies that can comprehensively analyze genomic features such as methods to evaluate gene regulation and nuclear organization, and the dynamics of genomic features in single and mixed populations of cells (excluding nucleic acid sequencing technologies).
Synthetic Nucleic Acid Technology Development
This initiative is focused on supporting the advancement of novel technologies and methods to inexpensively and accurately synthesize specified sequences of nucleic acids and synthetic constructs at the scale needed for genomics-based research.
The NHGRI Technology Development Coordinating Center will develop an infrastructure to address the need for closer interactions between these efforts. This will enable opportunities for collaboration among grantees, accelerated technology innovation, and improved dissemination of program advances and resources to the broader biomedical research community.
Announcements
New FOAs from NHGRI – Molecular Phenotypes of Null Alleles in Cells (MorPhiC)
In August, NHGRI published three FOAs that together request applications proposing a five-year pilot effort whose long-term goal is to catalog the molecular and cellular phenotypes resulting from null alleles of genes in human cells. MorPhiC Phase 1 will target 1000 loci for gene knock-outs; explore multiple molecular and cellular assays; develop analyses to help understand the utility of, and requirements for, the data; and distribute the results to the community.
The overall goal of Phase 1 is to reveal and understand the key challenges in scaling up such an effort to the whole genome, including: optimization of mutagenesis; scalability and informativeness of assays; limitations of interpretation–biological or other variability; development of data quality standards and data formats; and exploration of the range of uses for the data, alone and in combination with other genomic data types. This will inform a possible second phase.
- https://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/rfa-files/RFA-HG-21-029.html Molecular Phenotypes of Null Alleles in Cells (MorPhiC) Phase 1: Data Production Research and Development Centers (UM1 Clinical trials not allowed)
- https://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/rfa-files/RFA-HG-21-030.html Molecular Phenotypes of Null Alleles in Cells (MorPhiC) Phase 1: Data Analysis and Validation Centers (U01 Clinical trials not allowed)
- https://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/rfa-files/RFA-HG-21-031.html Molecular Phenotypes of Null Alleles in Cells (MorPhiC) Phase 1: Data Resource and Administrative Coordinating Center (U24 Clinical trials not allowed)
A pre-application community webinar will be held on September 10th; Pre-application webinar: https://www.genome.gov/event-calendar/MorPhiC-pre-application-webinar
Frequently Asked Questions about the FOA’s will be available on the NHGRI web site referenced.
Email Contact: morphicprogram@nih.gov
Single-Molecule Protein Sequencing RFA
NHGRI is pleased to provide the following funding announcement for the Single-Molecule Protein Sequencing RFA:
The National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) in collaboration with the National Cancer Institute and the National Institute for Allied and Infectious Diseases is soliciting applications to accelerate innovation and early development in the emerging field of single-molecule protein sequencing (SMPS). The initiative is seeking novel technologies or major improvements to existing technologies. The short-term goal is technological improvements that lead to a significant increase in one or more combinations of throughput, cost, accuracy, sensitivity, dynamic range, and scale. The long-term goal is to achieve technological advances that enable generation of protein sequencing data at sufficient scale, speed, cost and accuracy to use routinely in studies of genome biology and function, and in biomedical and clinical research in general.
There are three Funding Opportunity Announcements: for R01 (RFA-HG-21-001), R21 (RFA-HG-002) and R43/44 (PAR-21-247) mechanisms. Links to these FOAs can also be found here. The first due date for these FOAs is October 1, 2021.
Welcome to the NHGRI Genome Technology (GT) Program Coordination Website
The TDCC is excited to work with the NHGRI GT grantees to enhance the development of new sequencing technologies and methods. We are currently working to plan the September CEGS meeting, as well as the initial logistics for the annual AGTD meeting next June.
This site will continue to evolve to include information on the current GT program grantees, their projects, and publications, the calls and processes for applying for Opportunity Funds, and the development of standards within the GT community. More to come!
Calendar of Events
NIH AGTD Meeting
The 2022 NIH Advanced Genomic Technology Development annual meeting is tentatively scheduled for June 7-9, 2022.
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