First projects are chile pathogen sequencing and the Schizophrenia Genome Project.
The New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology (NMT) and the National Center for Genome Resources (NCGR) are partnering to create the New Mexico Genome Sequencing Center (NMGSC). The State of New Mexico has provided $600,000 in funding to establish the Center, which will be located at NCGR in Santa Fe.
“The New Mexico Genome Sequencing Center is being established to serve the needs of researchers at all New Mexico universities and research institutes,” states Daniel H. Lopez, Ph.D., president of NMT.
The NMGSC will focus on medical resequencing. Medical resequencing is a new approach for discovery of the genetic basis of common human diseases or important crop traits. It refers to the large-scale sequencing of the genome of many individuals affected by a disease or with a trait of interest.
Initial NMGSC programs include sequencing the genome of the major pathogen of chile crops and the Schizophrenia Genome Project. Chile pathogen sequencing is being undertaken in collaboration with the Joint Genome Institute of the Department of Energy and 454 LifeSciences. It will be funded by grants from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the NSF, and the Department of Energy. The Schizophrenia Genome Project is being undertaken in collaboration with The MIND Institute and University of New Mexico, Albuquerque.
