"$100,000 Genome" Grants

NHGRI's "Near-Term Development for Genome Sequencing" grants will support research aimed at sequencing a human-sized genome at 100 times lower cost than is possible today. There is strong potential that, five years from now, some of these technologies will be at or near commercial availability. Grant recipients and their approximate total funding are:

Gina L. Costa, Ph.D., Agencourt Personal Genomics., Beverly, Mass.
$1.2 million (2 years)
"Bead-Based Polony Sequencing"

Supplemental funding is expected to accelerate commercialization of this technology that will use oligonucleotide ligation to read DNA sequence, using bead-based, polymerase colony (polony) sequencing technology.

Vera B. Gorfinkel, Ph.D., The State University of New York (SUNY),
Stony Brook, N.Y.
$1.5 million (2 years)
"Ultra High Throughput DNA Sequencing System Based on Two-Dimensional Monolith Multi-Capillary Arrays and Nanoliter Reaction Volume"

This group will develop and implement an efficient method capable of sequencing mammalian size genomes by amplifying single template molecules, and subjecting the product to Sanger sequencing and a highly parallel, capillary electrophoresis separation system.

Greg Kellogg, Ph.D., Network Biosystems, Woburn, Mass.
$4.5 million (3 years)
"$100,000 Genome Using Integrated Microfluidic Capillary Electrophoresis"

This group will work to improve performance of Sanger sequencing and PCR as compared to that attainable using capillary electrophoresis systems. To do so, it will miniaturize and integrate current sequencing technologies, building on its microfluidics platform.

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Contact: Geoff Spencer
spencerg@mail.nih.gov
301-402-0911
NIH/National Human Genome Research Institute
8-Aug-2005