NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – DNA Software has won three grants totaling $2.5 million from the National Institutes of Health to support the development of its software for use in predicting the structure of bacterial ribosomes and modeling the reaction rates of DNA and RNA experiments.
In one of the grants, the company will use the Phase II Small Business Innovation Research funding to support development of its Nucleic Acid CAD software, which predicts the 3D structures of clinically relevant pathogens.
Half of the antibiotics currently on the market target bacterial ribosomes, but the 3D structures of many of these RNA complexes are still unknown, the Ann Arbor, Mich.-based bioinformatics company said in a statement, adding that knowledge about ribosome structure is critical for the development of new antibiotics for drug-resistant bacteria.
In another project, DNA Software is adding information about kinetics and modified nucleotides to its existing Oligonucleotide Modeling Platform software with the aim of using it to develop selective diagnostics.