NIH最近又房顶了八个小组,大家看看哪一个最有可能成功?
The new grants are awarded (pending available funds) to:
University of California Santa Cruz, $2.29 million over three years
Principal Investigator: Mark Akeson, Ph.D.
Investigators plan to sequence single DNA molecules by using a nanopore
device comprised of a sensor that touches, examines and identifies each
nucleotide, or DNA building block, in a DNA strand as an enzyme motor moves
it through the pore. The scientists will focus on DNA “resequencing” —
examining the DNA nucleotides over and over — because of the difficulty in
accurately reading each strand initially.
Illumina, Inc., San Diego, $592,000 over two years
Principal Investigator: Boyan Boyanov, Ph.D.
Dr. Boyanov and his team aim to create a hybrid protein solid-state nanopore
array system that can enable scientists to sequence DNA on a large scale.
Their goal is to improve the robustness of nanopore platforms by combining
computer chip fabrication methods with biological nanopores to enable high-
throughput sequencing. The latter refers to a very high rate of sequencing
DNA by sequencing large numbers of DNA samples in parallel.
University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, $880,000 over two years
Principal Investigator: Marija Drndic, Ph.D.
Investigators plan to develop a synthetic nanopore from graphene — an
extremely conductive material consisting of a lattice of atoms, one atom
thick — that will enable the detection of individual DNA bases without the
need to slow down the DNA molecule as it passes through a pore. Researchers
hope to directly identify DNA bases by measuring unique differences in
current flowing through the graphene.
Caerus Molecular Diagnostics, Inc., Mountain View, California, $701,000 over
three years
Principal Investigator: Javier Farinas, Ph.D.
Researchers commonly use a system to identify DNA bases that entails making
many copies of DNA and detecting a light signal from the DNA. Dr. Farinas
and his co-workers plan to test a technology that uses an engineered enzyme
switch to convert the product of a single molecule DNA sequencing reaction
into many copies of a reporter molecule that are easily detected. The method
promises to more accurately identify DNA bases.
The Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, California, $4.4 million over four
years
Principal Investigator: M. Reza Ghadiri, Ph.D.
Investigators plan to produce protein nanopore arrays in order to sequence
tens of thousands of DNA molecules in parallel, with the eventual goal of
sequencing a human genome in as little as 10 minutes. They will explore
three separate approaches, including arrays of lipid bilayers containing
nanopores, protein pores individually embedded in synthetic films, and
nanopores made of DNA that are distributed on DNA scaffolds.
Eve Biomedical, Inc., Mountain View, California, $500,000 over two years
Principal Investigator: Theofilos Kotseroglou, Ph.D.
Researchers will study a system to sequence DNA using an enzyme (polymerase)
on a carbon nanotube, in an array format. Carbon nanotubes are long, thin
cylindrical tubes that are highly conductive. When an enzyme is anchored on
a tube, the enzyme’s motion — while interacting with a DNA sample —
changes the conductivity on the nanotube, and enables bases of the sample
DNA to be identified.
University of Washington, Seattle, $1.7 million over three years
Principal Investigator: Jay Shendure, M.D., Ph.D.
Dr. Shendure and his colleagues plan to develop new molecular biology
techniques to efficiently and cost-effectively stitch together genomes
across long distances. They hope this will help improve the quality of
genomes that are generated by new DNA sequencing technologies.
University of California, San Diego, $3.7 million over four years
Principal Investigators: Kun Zhang, Ph.D. and Xiaohua Huang, Ph.D.
This team plans to develop a system using microfluidics that will enable
accurate genome sequencing of a single mammalian cell. Investigators will
separate and sequence single chromosomal DNA strands, and then with the help
of novel technology to make many copies of genomes, they will create DNA
sequence libraries for DNA sequencing of single cells.