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.
