NEW YORK, Aug. 5-The Molecular Sciences Institute said today that it has been named a federal Center of Excellence in Genomic Science, a recognition that comes with $15.5 million in funds over the next five years.
The grant, awarded by the National Human Genome Research Institute, will support the institute's efforts to develop new models of intra-cellular signaling.
Researchers in the institute's Center for Genomic Experimentation and Computation will study the pheromone signal transduction pathway in Saccharomyces cerevisiae, an effort called the "Alpha Project." The hope is that this pathway can serve as a model for more complicated systems in higher organisms.
The project will be led by Roger Brent, the scientific director and president of MSI, and also include researchers from the California Institute of Technology, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and other universities and research institutes.
The Molecular Sciences Institute is an independent non-profit research laboratory based in Berkeley, Calif. It was founded in 1996 by Sydney Brenner to encourage cross-disciplinary scientific work.
For more information, see the institute website.