The National Human Genome Research Institute has awarded a $4,878,587 grant to The Jackson Laboratory (JAX) to maintain funding of the Mouse Genome Database (MGD), the international online resource for the laboratory mouse.
“The MGD has a unique and strategic role as a community resource for facilitating the use of the laboratory mouse for understanding human biology and disease,” says JAX Professor Janan T. Eppig, Ph.D. Eppig and Professors Judith A. Blake, Ph.D. and Carol J. Bult, Ph.D., are the principal investigators of the grant.
For more than 25 years, the MGD has provided free access to a wealth of genetic, genomic and biological data to the worldwide biomedical research community, and a critical resource for advancing the emerging field of precision genomic medicine. MGD is one component of JAX Mouse Genome Informatics, a team of more than 50 scientists and software engineers.
The new funding supports maintenance of the MGD as well as development of new software components and implementation of enhancements to the system to accommodate new types and sources of data.
The Jackson Laboratory is an independent, nonprofit biomedical research institution based in Bar Harbor, Maine, with a National Cancer Institute-designated Cancer Center, a facility in Sacramento, Calif., and a new genomic medicine institute in Farmington, Conn. It employs 1,700 staff, and its mission is to discover precise genomic solutions for disease and empower the global biomedical community in the shared quest to improve human health.