NEW YORK, Oct. 9 (GenomeWeb) - The National Institutes of Health has awarded Pacific Northwest National Laboratory $10.2 million to support a center for basic research in proteomics -- the largest grant in the government lab's history, the PNNL said today.
The five-year grant designates PNNL an NIH research resource center, and will establish PNNL as a base for proteomics research worldwide. The grant will also fund the development of "advanced instrumentation" for studying proteomics.
"The award will enable PNNL staff to collaborate on important biomedical projects with top NIH-supported researchers," Dick Smith, a Battelle Fellow at PNNL, and director of the resource center housed at the William R. Wiley Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory, said in a statement.
Specifically, the grant will help PNNL develop faster proteomics technologies, and will enable researchers there to "increase the speed and sensitivity of proteome measurements, with the aim of allowing studies of the proteins in even a single cell," PNNL said.
The grant also will support improved computational and bioinformatics tools "for extracting and visualizing and ultimately understanding" the center's proteomic data, the PNNL said.