Daniel Gilchrist: Okay, so I’m Dan Gilchrist.
I’m a NHGRI Program Director.
One of the key objectives of this workshop is to identify current and future opportunities
for better understanding genome function and for applying that understanding.
So the arena of genome function encompasses a very, very large conceptual space and that
can be considered from many different viewpoints.
And it’s a space that can be explored in many different dimensions.
From studies of model organisms to human tissues.
Studies that support work in basic biology to specific focuses on diseases.
And so, because this such a large and varied space, NHGRI can’t explore the entire space
ourselves.
That’s going to be up to much larger communities, but we hope that we can identify areas where
we can make a significant impact and really catalyze research in parts of this genomic
space that hopefully you will help us identify over the course of this workshop.
[coughs], excuse me.
So, we have a lot of varied expertise in the room today.
Since people are coming from such distinct backgrounds, we thought it’s be a good idea
to start with a really high level view of what the functional genomics landscape looks
like now and what it might look like over the next couple of years.
So everybody is very roughly on the same page for jumping on point.
So, we’re going to begin with an overview of the current phase of ENCODE, ENCODE 3 by
Mike Snyder and he’s going to present what current ENCODE participants see as the likely
contributions both data generation and conceptual.
When that phase of ENCODE ends in mid-2016, and then we’re going to move to a series
of very high level overviews of what we are referring to, for lack of a better term, as
ENCODE-related projects.
So, these were selected for a variety of reasons.
First, they have some similarity to ENCODE, either in the goals, the type of data they’re
generating, or the resources they’re making available to different communities.
Second, they all share a key feature of an NHGRI type of project.
Which is to provide a genome scale resource which enables work from larger scientific
communities.
And finally, these all tend to be larger, multi-lab efforts.
And that is largely for a practical reason.
Of course, there is a huge, huge contribution to functional genomics understanding from
individual labs.
But, that tends to be much harder to track.
It’s a little bit easier to keep tabs on these large, multi-lab efforts.
[coughs], so I want to finish just by saying that there is a lot of cross-talk between
these projects, both at the level of PI’s who serve in some capacity in multiple projects.
As well as program officers who are communicating about these – the projects.
We think that this cross-talk is really important because it can help facilitate efficient exploration
of this big functional genomics phase.
And avoid unnecessary duplication of efforts.
So, because we had so much expertise in the room, please take advantage of that over the
next couple of days and with that, I will end and introduce Mike Snyder.
Who is a longtime member of all things ENCODE.
He is a current PI of an ENCODE production center and I will leave it to Mike.
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