MRI: Acquisition of Solexa Genome Analyzer to enable collaborative molecular, environmental, and computational research

该奖项是根据2009年美国复苏和再投资法案(公法111-5)资助的。新的革命性技术已经开发出来，使科学家能够快速确定大量DNA的序列。这将使几乎所有生物学学科的科学家能够迅速推进旨在了解疾病和发育的分子基础的项目，了解DNA水平上的差异如何导致种群中个体的差异，并在分子水平上了解对环境做出积极和消极贡献的不同生物。这种类型的知识将对我们对基础生物学的理解产生深远的影响，以及DNA序列的变化如何影响一个人是否会患上疾病，或者生态位的差异如何导致环境的变化。收购下一代测序机将使南加州大学的广大科学家能够与跨越分子和计算生物学、海洋环境生物学和神经生物学学科的科学家一起解决所有这些类型的问题。南加州大学的管理层培育了一个创新和协作的环境，这对成功使用这个下一代平台至关重要，因为这些数据的生成和分析需要非常不同的学术学科的专业知识。此外，南加州大学教职员工的主要目标之一是培养下一代科学家，获得下一代测序机将确保这些学生接受最尖端的培训。购买测序机将与南加州大学卓越与基因组学中心合作，该中心有一个强大的培训计划，确保使用基因组和计算方法对代表不足的少数族裔进行尖端生物学培训。

This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).New revolutionary technologies have been developed enabling scientists with the ability to rapidly determine the sequence of large amounts of DNA. This will allow scientists in nearly all biological disciplines to rapidly move forward on projects that seek to understand the molecular basis of disease and development, to understand how differences at the DNA level leads to differences in individuals in a population, and to understand at a molecular level the different organisms that contribute both positively and negatively to the environment. This type of knowledge will have profound impacts on our understanding of basic biology and how variations in DNA sequence influence whether an individual gets a disease or how differences in ecological niches results in changes to the environment. The acquisition of a next-generation sequencing machine will allow a broad group of scientists at University of Southern California to address all of these types of questions with scientists that span the disciplines of Molecular and Computational Biology, Marine Environmental Biology and Neurobiology. The administration at University of Southern California has fostered an environment of innovation and collaboration, which is critical for success in the use of this next-generation platform, since the generation and analyses of this data requires expertise in very disparate academic discipline. In addition, one of the primary goals of faculty at University of Southern California is training the next generation of scientists and the acquisition of the next-generation sequencing machine will ensure that these students receive the most cutting-edge training. The purchase of the sequencing machine will tie in with the Center for Excellence and Genomics at University of Southern California that has a robust training program that ensures that underrepresented minorities are trained in cutting edge biology using genomic and computational approaches.