NEW YORK, July 23-The NIH has awarded Affymetrix nearly $4 million to continue transcriptome mapping work in collaboration with the National Cancer Institute. In May, Affy and NCI researchers published in Science the early results of their work that used high-density Affymetrix microarrays to uncover hidden levels of RNA transcription activity in the human genome and hypothesized that the novel RNA transcription activity might play an important role in normal cellular operations.
Thomas Gingeras, VP of biological research at Affymetrix and senior author of the Science paper, said that the data "support an emerging view of the genome where RNA populations function in complex regulatory roles." He said the collaborators aim to evaluate the RNA populations across various cellular types throughout the human genome and to deposit the results into a public database.