From Science as well … get your thinking caps on:
Two hot biological research areas–epigenetics and the microbes our bodies host–will lead Roadmap 1.5, the second round of research initiatives that cut across all 27 institutes and centers at the NIH. Alan Krensky, incoming director of NIH’s new planning office, says solicitations for these two 5-year programs will go out this fall. Epigenetics will catalog genetic changes that affect gene expression but don’t involve a change in DNA sequence. The Human Microbiome Project will examine the body’s microbial communities and their relation to disease. Two more projects to start as pilots include work on human phenotyping and protein probes. NIH projects spending $30 million next year and $80 million for each of the next 4 years.
