Influenza Genome Sequencing Project

The Influenza Genome Sequencing Project (IGSP) is an American-based genome project aimed at improving the availability of genomic sequence data from influenza viruses and related information.The project is funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), a division of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and has been operating out of the NIAID Microbial Sequencing Center at The Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR).Sequence information generated by the project has been placed into public domain through GenBank.

Origins

In early 2004, David Lipman, Lone Simonsen, Steven Salzberg, and a consortium of other scientists wrote a proposal to begin sequencing large numbers of influenza viruses at The Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR). Prior to this project, only a handful of flu genomes were publicly available. Their proposal was approved by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and would later become the IGSP. New technology development led by Elodie Ghedin began at TIGR later that year, and the first publication describing > 100 influenza genomes appeared in 2005 in the journal Nature

Research goals

The project is making all sequence data publicly available through GenBank, an international, NIH-funded, searchable online database.This research model is hoped to provide international researchers with the information needed to develop new vaccine, therapies and diagnostics, as well as improve...
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