Dundee at hub of new era science As Contact went to press it was being announced that the University of Dundee would receive funding for a £4 million research centre which will position the University at the hub of the fastest developing and most significant biomedical field today - "post genomics".
The announcement was made by Lord Sainsbury at an event at the Department of Trade and Industry in London to disclose the latest successful bids to the Joint Infrastructure Fund - a £750 million fund set up by the Government and the Wellcome Trust with the Higher Education Council for England to invest in the nation's university science infrastructure.
The Post-genomic Research Centre, to be based in the Wellcome Trust Biocentre complex, will bring together in one place a full range of state-of-the-art technologies, including bioinformatics, proteomics, DNA array technology and DNA sequencing, structural biology and molecular interactions, designed to exploit the vast quantities of genome data which have been amassed.
"This will be a one stop shop for all biomedical technology," said Professor Mike Ferguson who led the Dundee bid. "In the 90s the buzz word was 'genomics'. Now, we are moving into the era of 'post-genomics'. Projects such as the Human Genome Project and others have delivered to us astronomical quantities of information; now we have to find ways of mining that data and exploiting it in the battle against human disease. This purpose-built centre will bring together in one place for the first time in Scotland, the means to do that. It is no exaggeration to say post-genomics is the fundamental and underpinning technology for all future research on all types of diseases.
"To have this centre based at the University of Dundee recognises the international quality of the biomedical work going on here and puts Dundee in a powerful position to accelerate into the future, not only in terms of global research but as a major recruitment card in attracting the cream of the world's scientists to the city."
Four new posts will be directly created at the centre.
The Post-genomic Research Centre will be located in refurbished space at the heart of the Wellcome Trust Biocentre Complex, one of the UK's largest biomedical research communities. Its services will be accessible to well over 40 biomedical research groups at the University.
A range of laboratories and specialist suites will provide four major strands of technology.
- Bioinformatics or "number crunching" computer techniques which will allow genomic data to be queried on specific questions such as 'can we find a gene associated with a particular disease?" and "what does this gene product look like and what does it do?"
- Proteomics which allows scientists to identify the genes encoding particular proteins which, for example, may have been recognised as playing a key role in cancer, diabetes, malaria or other diseases.
- DNA array technology which allows rapid screening, assisting scientists in comparing genetic differences between diseased and healthy cells.
- Molecular interactions - which uses a range of technologies including NMR spectroscopy, light scattering and analytical ultracentrifugation to understand how molecules interact with each other..
This is the University's second JIF bid success. Its first, for a £1m microscopy centre, was among those selected to showcase the best of the bids at the London ceremony.
The Dundee bid was one of 27 successful out of a total of 163 submissions in this JIF round. In the three rounds so far a total of 110 bids have been successful accounting for £600m between them.
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