National Institutes of Health

Description

This FOA seeks applications to develop and apply generalizable approaches to characterize the role of candidate functional elements identified by the ENCyclopedia Of DNA Elements (ENCODE) in specific biological contexts.ENCODE has identified different classes of candidate functional regions based on their correlation with biochemical signatures, but has not tested the majority of those to determine what, if any, biological roles they actually play.This FOA solicits activities that include employing one or more assays to characterize the biological function of candidate elements, testing the impact of natural or engineered genetic variants on element function, or using human diseases or biological systems as test cases to evaluate the approaches. Awardees will also work together to characterize the strengths and weaknesses of the collection of assays funded by comparing their performance, and to identify a set of well-characterized functional elements in healthy and/or disease states. These products are expected to provide an understanding of the utility and generalizability of functional characterization approaches, and to facilitate investigation of the role of genetic variation in human disease. The funded projects will participate in the ENCODE Consortium.

Who can apply

• State governments
• County governments
• City or township governments
• Special district governments
• Independent school districts
• Public and State controlled institutions of higher education
• Native American tribal governments (Federally recognized)
• Public housing authorities / Indian housing authorities
• Native American tribal organizations (other than Federally recognized)
• Nonprofits with 501(c)(3) status (other than higher education)
• Nonprofits without 501(c)(3) status (other than higher education)
• Private institutions of higher education
• For-profit organizations other than small businesses
• Small businesses
• Others

Contact

NIH OER Webmaster<br/>FBOWebmaster@OD.NIH.GOV<br/>
FBOWebmaster@OD.NIH.GOV