This spring GDF donated funds to assist with the purchase of two state-of-the-art gene sequencers for Mount Sinai’s Department of Genetics and Genomics. The Illumina GXII NextGen Sequencers were purchased by combining a grant from the National Institutes of Health with a $600,000 grant from the GDF. These machines help expand Mount Sinai’s research capabilities in many ways, including:

• disease gene discovery
• analysis of gene expression (number of copies of all genes made in normal and diseased cells)
• analysis of the elements that control gene expression, as well as the ability to sequence a person’s whole genome

Already, both machines are working at full capacity and have dramatically increased the department’s capabilities. With this purchase Mount Sinai will be one of only four research institutions in the country with this level of sophisticated equipment allowing the department to expand further into the field of genomics.