NHGRI Announces $1,000 Genome Grants

By Bio-IT World Staff

September 14, 2010 | The National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) announced more than $18 million in grants yesterday to drive development of third generation DNA sequencing technologies to bring the cost of sequencing a human genome to $1,000. NHGRI hopes that at that price point individuals' DNA can be used by biomedical researchers and health care workers to improve the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of human disease.  

"NHGRI and its grantees have made significant progress toward the goal of developing DNA sequencing technologies to sequence a human genome for $1,000 or less," said Eric D. Green, director of NHGRI, in a press release. "However, we must continue to support and encourage innovative approaches that hold the most promise for advancing our knowledge of human health and disease."

The recipients of the grants and their approximate amounts of funding are:

Adam Abate, Ph.D., GnuBIO Inc., New Haven, Conn.
$240,000 (1 year)
Microfluidic DNA Sequencing

Jeremy S. Edwards, Ph.D., University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center, Albuquerque
$2.7 million (3 years)
Polony Sequencing and the $1000 Genome

Javier A. Farinas, Ph.D., Caerus Molecular Diagnostics Inc., Los Altos, Calif.
$500,000 (2 years)
Millikan Sequencing by Label-Free Detection of Nucleotide Incorporation

M. Reza Ghadiri, Ph.D., Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, Calif.
$5.1 million (4 years)
Single-Molecule DNA Sequencing with Engineered Nanopores

Steven J. Gordon, Ph.D., Intelligent Bio-Systems Inc., Waltham, Mass.
$2.6 million (2 years)
Ordered Arrays for Advanced Sequencing Systems

Xiaohua Huang, Ph.D., University of California San Diego
$800,000 (2 years)
Direct Real-Time Single Molecule DNA Sequencing

Stuart Lindsay, Ph.D., Arizona State University, Tempe
$860,000 (3 years)
Tunnel Junction for Reading All Four DNA Bases with High Discrimination

Amit Meller, Ph.D., Boston University
$4.1 million (4 years)
Single Molecule Sequencing by Nanopore-Induced Photon Emission

Murugappan Muthukumar, Ph.D., University of Massachusetts, Amherst
$800,000 (3 years)
Modeling Macromolecular Transport for Sequencing Technologies

Dean Toste, Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley
$430,000 (2 years)
Base-Selective Heavy Atom Labels for Electron Microscopy-Based DNA Sequencing 

NHGRI launched its first programs to accelerate improvements in sequencing technologies in 2004 after technology advances driven by the Human Genome Project. Last year, the program surpassed the goal of producing high- quality genome sequences of 3 billion base pairs – the amount of DNA found in humans and other mammals – for $100,000. The cost to sequence a human genome has now dipped below $40,000.

The goal of a $1,000 genome is a common one, espoused by many technology providers and researchers, though many future generation technologies claim even lower prices are on the horizon.