Exomes and proteomics get funding

Federal funding is furthering research in two areas: DNA sequencing and proteomics.

First, The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute has allocated $64 million in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funding over six awards to support DNA sequencing on samples from clinical data gathered from large population studies on heart, lung, and blood diseases. One effort funded involves exome sequencing, for study of the roughly one percent of human genes that are exons, or protein-making genes, says the NHLBI.

Researchers will analyze genomics data from more than 8,000 participants in long-term studies to find genetic contributors to heart, lung, and blood diseases, including heart attack, stroke, diabetes, obesity, asthma, chronic pulmonary disease, hypertension, and pre-cancerous blood disorders, such as myelodysplastic syndrome, NHLBI said.

Project data will be made available through the National Institutes of Health's database to the research community.

The second funding announcement concerns a $747,000 small business technology transfer (STTR) grant to scientific-discovery software maker BioInquire. The grant will allow the company to further its work on ProteoIQ proteomics software, which combines label-free or reporter ion quantification with data mining functions. ProteoIQ was released in June 2008, following its development via an initial STTR grant earlier that year.

The funds will be used to help bridge tandem mass spectrometry data and large-scale clinical proteomics by providing a platform for comparing proteomic data across hundreds of patients. It will assist researchers in finding differences between multiple proteomic data sets. "Our goal is to serve as a link between the initial analyses of raw mass spectrometry data and meaningful discovery," says James Atwood, BioInquire CEO, in an announcement.

- see the NHLBI announcement
- here's the BioInquire release