The Jackson Laboratory's Gene Expression Database (GXD), an open resource for the international biomedical research community, will receive a total of $10.5 million in support over the next five years from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health & Human Development.
Jackson Laboratory Associate Professor Martin Ringwald, Ph.D., is the principal investigator of GXD. "We capture and integrate mouse expression data generated by researchers worldwide, with particular emphasis on mouse development, and make these data freely and widely available, readily accessible to powerful database searches," he explains. "Gene expression data provides researchers with critical insights in the function of genes and the molecular mechanisms of development, differentiation, and disease. This is vital information for scientists who are investigating normal human development, birth defects and other developmental disorders, cancer and many other diseases."
GXD is a component of the Laboratory's overall Mouse Genome Informatics program, which is the international database resource for the laboratory mouse, providing integrated genetic, genomic and biological data to facilitate the study of human health and disease.
The new funding will support the continued development of the GXD, including further data curation and integration, an expanded database infrastructure, and enhanced data displays and query tools.
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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 genomic medicine institute in Farmington, Conn. It employs 1,800 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.