Towering over South Campus on Mason Farm Road, the state-of-the-art Carolina Center for Genome Sciences houses scientists who are unraveling the genetic traits of the human body and making life-altering discoveries.
The center was established in August 2001 to comprehensively analyze the entire genetic blueprint of an organism.
"Genomics comes across pretty powerful information that can really affect people's lives," said Mary Sym, associate director of research. "It can potentially impact the health and welfare of society at all levels, including drug discovery, patient care, crop protection and public policy."
With diverse faculty and cutting-edge facilities and laboratories, the center effectively keeps pace with the constantly evolving field of genomics.
"The bread and butter of genomics is what we call 'bench research' - the actual experiments done in the labs," she said. "But beyond that, we must incorporate statistics, bioethics, et cetera. This new effort to incorporate different branches of science for genomic research grows out of the fundamental discoveries at the 'bench.'"
Sym said another important function of the center is training the next generation of scientists and clinicians in the genome sciences so that "they can really have a grasp of what's going on."
The center now is working to use three of 21 major grants from the National Institutes of Health to fund new medical research centers and speed research science into practical use.
The grants are part of the agency's Roadmap for Medical Research, which provides a framework for NIH funding priorities and represents an attempt to make the country's medical research system more efficient and productive.
One of the grants is aimed at genetic analysis and will use computers to help sort the vast amounts of information in the recently completed human genome.
