NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – The Jackson Laboratory has netted a $25.2 million grant from the National Human Genome Research Institute to support its Mouse Genome Database (MGD), an open-source resource for researchers studying human disease and biology around the world.
The institute in Bar Harbor, Me., said the funds include a $24.6 million grant and a $500,000 supplement to provide continued funding for the MGD, which provides genome-scale data sets for mouse and human, cross-references mouse genetic information with physiological data, and standardizes the vocabulary for diseases, genes, and physical characteristics.
The NHGRI funding will support salaries for three dozen researchers working on the MGD and development of new online tools to enhance the database's querying functions. It also will provide for staff for technical assistance and training for those using the database.
The MGD houses information on genetic markers, phenotypes, sequences, mapping data, distribution patterns for recombinant inbred strains, cross haplotypes, and a range of other types of information.
That data is pulled from scientific literature, DNA mapping panel data, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Whitehead Institute, Washington University, the IMAGE Consortium, and from various researchers.
"The goal of MGD is to facilitate use of the mouse and to enable development of new hypotheses for new discoveries in human medicine," Jackson Professor Janan Eppig, a co-principal investigator on the grant, said in a statement. "We will continue to make all data in MGD freely available to all."