NATIONAL INSTITUTES OF HEALTH
National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases
NIH NEWS RELEASE
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Thursday, November 29, 2001
Contact:
Sam Perdue
(301) 402-1663
sp189u@nih.gov
NIAID TAKES NEXT GENOME STEP
For the first time in history, infectious diseases
researchers are armed with the complete genetic blueprints
for many of the world's most common or deadly microbes.
Today, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious
Diseases (NIAID) announced a major new initiative that will
use those blueprints to identify the precise molecules a
microbe uses to infect people and cause illness or even
death.
Through a six-year, $25 million contract, NIAID
will establish a functional genomics resource center at The
Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR) in Rockville, Md.
The center will provide tools, reagents and training for
researchers and will play a key role in helping scientists
use an organism's DNA code to learn new ways to attack that
organism.
A microbe's genes are the blueprints for its proteins.
Different proteins perform different duties: structural
proteins compose the framework of a cell, toxins attack and
damage a person's cells, and enzymes direct the hundreds of
different chemical reactions a microbe requires for
survival. The power of the genome is that it contains a
complete, coded list of all the proteins a pathogen makes.
Researchers use functional genomics to scour that list and
determine what role each protein plays.
"This is an unprecedented period in infectious diseases
research because we now know the genetic information that
helps dictate the biology of many microbes," says NIAID
Director Anthony S. Fauci, M.D. "The new functional
genomics center will help us use that information to better
understand the roles of individual genes and proteins, and
to develop new drugs and vaccines that specifically target
each organism."
With NIAID support, scientists from TIGR and other
institutions have already finished sequencing the DNA of
many pathogens, including those that cause tuberculosis,
cholera, chlamydial infections and syphilis. Parts of the
malaria and leishmania parasite genomes are also known.
The functions of some microbe genes are suspected based on
similarities to known genes, but a large number of genes
are unique to one organism and have unknown functions.
The Pathogen Functional Genomics Resource Center will be a
centralized training and resource facility that supports
research on three to 10 important pathogens over the next
three years. Establishing the center was a key
recommendation of last year's scientific panel that met to
develop an action plan for NIAID's genome research
activities. The center will develop new technologies that
enable scientists to more rapidly analyze gene function by
simultaneously studying the whole genome rather than small
regions or individual genes. The center will also train
researchers on the latest techniques in functional genomics
and will be a repository for required reagents. As the
genomes of more pathogens are sequenced and technologies
are developed to analyze the growing number of known genes,
the center's repository function will become increasingly
important.
The center's resources will be made available to the
scientific community, and the procedures for access to
those resources are currently in development. Updates on
how researchers can apply to the center, plus additional
information about the center's activities, can be found
online at the following Web site:
http://pfgrc.tigr.org.
NIAID's Web site will also contain instructions for
investigators who wish to apply.
NIAID is a component of the National Institutes of Health
(NIH). NIAID supports basic and applied research to
prevent, diagnose, and treat infectious and immune-mediated
illnesses, including HIV/AIDS and other sexually
transmitted diseases, tuberculosis, malaria, autoimmune
disorders, asthma and allergies>>
