WASHINGTON, D.C.—US Department of Energy (DOE) Secretary Spencer Abraham yesterday (November 11) announced a new list of long-range funding priorities for 28 DOE facilities that includes several life science initiatives. The blueprint, presented at a press briefing in Washington D.C., recommends plans to update existing facilities as well as create new ones over the next 20 years.
Although most of the priorities are for projects in the physical sciences, among the top priorities are a few related to life sciences: a “Protein Production and Tags” facility that would mass produce thousands of proteins per year and create tags to identify them; and a “Characterization and Imaging of Molecular Machines” facility that would focus on isolating, characterizing, and creating images of molecular machines that perform cellular functions. It was the DOE that coordinated the 13-year Human Genome Project with the National Institutes of Health.
The first on the DOE 20-year wish ...
