Notice Number: NOT-HG-15-034

Key Dates
Release Date: September 11, 2015
Estimated Publication Date of Announcement: November 2015
First Estimated Application Due Date: February 2016
Earliest Estimated Award Date: December 2016
Earliest Estimated Start Date: December 2016

Issued by
National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI)

Purpose

The National Human Genome Research Institute intends to promote a new initiative by publishing a Funding Opportunity Announcement to support high-throughput pipelines of a range of assays capable of generating high quality data to map, comprehensively, biochemical activities exhibited by the human and mouse genomes that are associated with specific functional elements. The primary activity of the mapping centers will be unbiased data generation in an expanded number of cell contexts (cell types, fates, states) using multiple biochemical assays.

This FOA will be one of four FOAs planned in functional genomics to expand the catalog of functional DNA sequence elements, move beyond cataloging towards understanding the functional role of genomic elements in specific biological contexts, develop strategies to apply these studies to disease research, increase the number of scientists from the research community contributing to the creation of the encyclopedia of functional elements, develop analytical tools to enhance the utility of the data and make the data, tools, analyses and assembled encyclopedia freely available to the research community. (See also NOT-HG-15-035; NOT-HG-15-036; NOT-HG-15-037.) For more information, see Concepts approved by National Advisory Committee for Human Genome Research: http://www.genome.gov/Pages/About/NACHGR/May2015AgendaDocuments/Concept_Clearance_Functional_Genomics_Initiatives_5-8-15.pdf.

This Notice is being provided to allow potential applicants sufficient time to develop meaningful collaborations and responsive projects. 

The FOA is expected to be published in the Fall of 2015 with an expected application due date in the Winter of 2016.

This FOA will utilize the UM1 (Research Project with Complex Structure -- Cooperative Agreement) activity code. Details of the planned FOA are provided below.

Research Initiative Details

The goal of the intended FOA is to support high-throughput pipelines for a range of assays capable of generating high quality data to map, comprehensively, biochemical activities exhibited by the human and mouse genomes that are associated with specific functional elements. The primary activity of the mapping centers will be data generation in an expanded number of cell contexts (cell types, fates, states) from what has previously been employed by the ENCODE (Encyclopedia of DNA Elements) Project using multiple biochemical assays. Since many functional elements are manifest only in restricted cell contexts, many additional cell contexts will be needed to create a comprehensive catalog. Some samples will be provided by biology and disease experts from the community to enable the study of specific cell lineages, biologically relevant conditions and diseases. Approximately 25% of the production effort will be devoted to thorough interrogation of a range of diseases to serve as examples of how to apply these biochemical assays to disease, and in turn, to inform how disease studies could be conducted over the longer term. All human samples to be assayed should be consented for open access data sharing. New and improved methods may be applied at high-throughput to identify new elements or overcome previous technical limitations, for example, using smaller number of cells or single cells, or providing higher resolution or otherwise more informative data. Depending on the capabilities of the different assays, they may be applied across a relatively small set of common samples or, if possible, across a wide range of cell types.

APPLICATIONS ARE NOT BEING SOLICITED AT THIS TIME.

Inquiries

Please direct all inquiries to:

Elise A. Feingold, Ph.D
National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI)
Telephone: 301-496-7531
Email: elise_feingold@nih.gov