The purpose of this Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) is to provide a Model Organisms Screening Center for Phase II of the Undiagnosed Diseases Network (UDN).
The Center will evaluate the pathogenicity and function of approximately 200 gene variants per year identified through the UDN.
Responsive
applications will propose to establish a screening strategy for selecting the most informative variants for analysis, and a research platform involving at a minimum Drosophila and zebrafish models.
The screening pipeline may include additional small animal models or cell-based assays, as appropriate, to analyze the function of UDN gene variants in the context of the respective UDN participants disease phenotype.
This initiative is funded through the NIH Common Fund which supports cross-cutting programs that are expected to have exceptionally high impact.