AVAILABILITY OF RFP FOR GENE DISCOVERY IN THE VISUAL SYSTEM

Release Date:  February 15, 2000 

NOTICE:  EY-00-002

National Eye Institute

The National Eye Institute (NEI), National Institutes of Health, has a 
requirement for Gene Discovery in the Visual System.  The contractor will be 
responsible for production of high-quality representative cDNA libraries from 
specific anatomical regions of the human visual system and for assessment of 
the utility of these cDNA libraries for novel gene discovery.  The primary goal 
of this project will be the discovery of genes expressed in the adult human 
visual system.  It is expected that the cDNA libraries, clones, and the 
resulting sequence data shall be made available for the wide distribution to 
the scientific community.  The contractor shall design quality assurance and 
quality control standards and protocols and methodologies to achieve all of the 
following:

1.  Improve and/or develop new techniques for preparing high quality RNA for 
the purpose of generating cDNA libraries from human visual system tissue.  
Obtain microdissected high-quality adult human tissue from ten regions of the 
visual system (retina, macula, fovea, retinal pigment epithelium (RPE), optic 
nerve/optic nerve head, cornea, trabecular meshwork, lens, visual cortex, and 
ciliary body/iris) for preparing RNA for cDNA library production.

2.  Develop techniques for the preparation of high-quality representative cDNA 
libraries.  Develop approaches for preparing high-quality directionally cloned 
cDNA libraries that are representative qualitatively or quantitatively of the 
genes expressed and are optimized to detect rare or unique transcripts 
(normalized libraries).  The ten cDNA libraries from the ten regions of the 
human visual system are expected to contain large inserts (1.5 - 2 kb average 
insert size) with reduced redundancy within each library and across libraries 
and enriched for representation of rare transcripts within each specific 
library.  

3.  Improve technologies for the purpose of assessing the quality of the cDNA 
libraries using high-throughput sequencing.  Perform DNA sequencing on clones 
in the ten cDNA libraries prepared in item 2 in order to generate 75,000 to 
100,000 3' ESTs.  The contractor shall assemble these ESTs sequences to 
generate a unique UNIGENE set of at least 30,000 genes.  Each member of the 
UNIGENE set will be sequenced to generate 5' ESTs for the purpose of 
identifying unique genes expressed within the specific region of the visual 
system.

4.  Distribute biological material and disseminate data.  The contractor shall 
agree to make cDNA libraries, clones, and sequencing data produced under this 
contract publicly available for wide use in the scientific community.  In 
addition, the contractor must have demonstrated ability in the following areas: 
generating high quality cDNA libraries from mammalian tissue; efficiently 
constructing cDNA libraries from mammalian tissue that are representative 
qualitatively or quantitatively of the genes expressed in the tissue in which 
rare transcripts are well represented; and efficiently performing high-
throughput sequencing of cDNA libraries from mammalian tissues and analyses of 
DNA sequencing data.

The Standard Classification Code is 8733.  RFP NIH-EY-00-04 will be available 
on or about March 1, 2000, at the following website:  
http://ocm.od.nih.gov/drc/rfp.htm.  THE SOLICITATION WILL BE AVAILABLE 
ELECTRONICALLY ONLY.  OFFERORS ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR ROUTINELY CHECKING THIS 
WEBSITE FOR ANY SOLICITATION AMENDMENTS THAT MAY BE ISSUED.  NO INDIVIDUAL 
NOTIFICATION OF ANY AMENDMENTS WILL BE PROVIDED.  Proposals will be due 45 days 
after issuance of the solicitation.  All responsible sources may submit a 
proposal which shall be considered.  Contact: Karen M. Gamble, Contracting 
Officer (301) 496-4487.  No collect calls will be accepted.


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