MICER resource saves time

A new functional genomics resource, described in Nature Genetics this week, could save the scientific community millions of dollars in annotating the mouse genome, the paper's lead author said.

David Adams heads the Wellcome Trust's Mutagenic Insertion and Chromosome Engineering Resource (MICER) project, a publicly available supply of 93,960 readymade insertional targeting vectors in two libraries for generating knockouts and for large-scale deletions, inversions, or duplications. Instead of having to screen a library for a particular gene or region of interest and then find a bacterial artificial chromosome clone or a genomic clone, the clone can be found online at the MICER Web site, eliminating the effort that otherwise would be needed in generating those resources, Adams told The Scientist.

"The Wellcome Trust is very forward thinking, they are basically saving millions of dollars here," said Adams, a member in the team of Allan Bradley, director of the trust's Sanger ...