Here is the announcement from the AAAS (sent out on April 02, 2007) about the Roche 1 GB Sequencing Grant Program...



Roche Applied Science is pleased to announce the winners of the 1 Gigabase Sequencing Grant Program. Due to the large number and superb quality of submissions, the external grant committee chose three winners and identified five runners-up. The proposals had a wide range of focuses, from human health to biofuels to whole genome studies. The proposed sample types for the projects also varied, from complex animal genomes to metagenomic samples to amplicons. We plan to offer the grant program again in Fall 2007, so stay tuned for updates on how the winners have progressed and for details about the call for grant submissions.

The winning proposals were selected based upon the criteria of feasibility and the overall impact the project would have on its field and science in general. The members of the review committee were:

Elaine Mardis (Washington University GSC)
Stephan Schuster (Penn State)
Rod Wing (University of Arizona)

The winners and their proposal titles are:

First Place: 1000 MB of sequencing data

The Regeneration Epigenome of the Salamander Ambystoma mexicanum

Wei Zhu and Tony Hunter
Salk Institute, Molecular and Cellular Biology Laboratory

David Gardiner and Susan Bryant
University of California Irvine, School of Biological Sciences

Randal Voss
University of Kentucky, Department of Biology

Inder Verma and Gerald Pao
Salk Institute, Laboratory of Genetics



Second Place: 500 MB of sequencing data

Genetics of Invasive Plants What Makes a Weed a Weed

Loren Reiseberg
University of British Columbia

Zhao Lai
Indiana University, Bloomington


Third Place: 300 MB of sequencing data

The Evolution of Insect Society: We Genes, Not Me Genes

Gene E. Robinson, and Sydney A. Cameron, Matthew E. Hudson, Saurabh Sinha
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Andrew Clark
Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics, Cornell University


Runners-Up: 100 MB of sequencing data

We had five runners-up. Their proposals addressed the following topics:

Community genomic analysis of microbial fuel cellsIdentification of regulatory small DNA pathways altered during pathogenic infection of mammalian cells Building genomic resources for sciurid rodents: a hibernation modelSmall RNAs and editing in autistic brains

High throughput cheese-quencing: a first metagenomic analysis