The Institute for Genomic Research
Encyclopedia
The Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR) was a non-profit genomics
Genomics
Genomics is a discipline in genetics concerning the study of the genomes of organisms. The field includes intensive efforts to determine the entire DNA sequence of organisms and fine-scale genetic mapping efforts. The field also includes studies of intragenomic phenomena such as heterosis,...

 research institute founded in 1992 by Craig Venter
Craig Venter
John Craig Venter is an American biologist and entrepreneur, most famous for his role in being one of the first to sequence the human genome and for his role in creating the first cell with a synthetic genome in 2010. Venter founded Celera Genomics, The Institute for Genomic Research and the J...

 in Rockville, Maryland
Rockville, Maryland
Rockville is the county seat of Montgomery County, Maryland, United States. It is a major incorporated city in the central part of Montgomery County and forms part of the Baltimore-Washington Metropolitan Area. The 2010 U.S...

, United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

. It is now a part of the J. Craig Venter Institute
J. Craig Venter Institute
The J. Craig Venter Institute is a non-profit genomics research institute founded by J. Craig Venter, Ph.D. in October 2006. The Institute was the result of consolidating four organizations: the Center for the Advancement of Genomics, The Institute for Genomic Research, the Institute for...

.

History

TIGR were the first group, in 1995, to sequence
DNA sequencing
DNA sequencing includes several methods and technologies that are used for determining the order of the nucleotide bases—adenine, guanine, cytosine, and thymine—in a molecule of DNA....

 a genome
Genome
In modern molecular biology and genetics, the genome is the entirety of an organism's hereditary information. It is encoded either in DNA or, for many types of virus, in RNA. The genome includes both the genes and the non-coding sequences of the DNA/RNA....

 of a free-living organism, the bacterium Haemophilus influenzae
Haemophilus influenzae
Haemophilus influenzae, formerly called Pfeiffer's bacillus or Bacillus influenzae, Gram-negative, rod-shaped bacterium first described in 1892 by Richard Pfeiffer during an influenza pandemic. A member of the Pasteurellaceae family, it is generally aerobic, but can grow as a facultative anaerobe. H...

. This landmark project, led by TIGR scientist Robert Fleischmann, led to an explosion of genome sequencing projects, all using the whole-genome sequencing technique pioneered earlier but never used for a whole bacterium until TIGR's project. TIGR scientist Claire Fraser led the projects to sequence the second bacterium, Mycoplasma genitalium
Mycoplasma genitalium
Mycoplasma genitalium is a small parasitic bacterium that lives on the ciliated epithelial cells of the primate genital and respiratory tracts. M. genitalium is the smallest known genome that can constitute a cell, and the second-smallest bacterium after the recently-discovered endosymbiont...

in 1996, and less than a year later TIGR's Carol Bult led the project to sequence the first genome of an Archaea
Archaea
The Archaea are a group of single-celled microorganisms. A single individual or species from this domain is called an archaeon...

l species, Methanococcus jannaschii. TIGR followed these accomplishments with the genomes of the pathogenic bacteria Borrelia burgdorferi
Borrelia burgdorferi
Borrelia burgdorferi is a species of Gram negative bacteria of the spirochete class of the genus Borrelia. B. burgdorferi is predominant in North America, but also exists in Europe, and is the agent of Lyme disease....

(which causes Lyme Disease) in 1997, and Treponema pallidum
Treponema pallidum
Treponema pallidum is a species of spirochaete bacterium with subspecies that cause treponemal diseases such as syphilis, bejel, pinta and yaws. The treponemes have a cytoplasmic and outer membrane...

(which causes syphilis) in 1998. In 1999 TIGR published the sequence of the radioresistant
Radioresistance
Radioresistance is the property of organisms that are capable of living in environments with very high levels of ionizing radiation.Radioresistance is surprisingly high in many organisms, in contrast to previously held views...

 polyextremophile
Polyextremophile
A polyextremophile is an organism which combines several extremophilic features. For example, a polyextremophile living at the summit of a mountain in the Atacama Desert might be a radioresistant xerophile, a psychrophile, and an oligotroph...

 Deinococcus radiodurans
Deinococcus radiodurans
Deinococcus radiodurans is an extremophilic bacterium, one of the most radioresistant organisms known. It can survive cold, dehydration, vacuum, and acid, and is therefore known as a polyextremophile and has been listed as the world's toughest bacterium in The Guinness Book Of World Records.-Name...

.

TIGR went on to become the world's leading center for microbial genome sequencing, and it also participated in the Human Genome Project
Human Genome Project
The Human Genome Project is an international scientific research project with a primary goal of determining the sequence of chemical base pairs which make up DNA, and of identifying and mapping the approximately 20,000–25,000 genes of the human genome from both a physical and functional...

 and many other genome projects. Its bioinformatics
Bioinformatics
Bioinformatics is the application of computer science and information technology to the field of biology and medicine. Bioinformatics deals with algorithms, databases and information systems, web technologies, artificial intelligence and soft computing, information and computation theory, software...

 group developed many of the pioneering software algorithms that were used to analyze these genomes, including the automatic gene finder GLIMMER
Glimmer
GLIMMER was the first bioinformatics system for finding genes that used the interpolated Markov model formalism. It is very effective at finding genes in bacteria, archaea, and viruses, typically finding 98–99% of all protein-coding genes. The GLIMMER software is open source and can be...

 and the genome alignment program MUMmer
MUMmer
MUMmer is a bioinformatics software system for sequence alignment. It is based on the suffix tree data structure and is one of the fastest and most efficient systems available for this task, enabling it to be applied to very long sequences. It has been widely used for comparing different genomes...

.

Following the 2001 anthrax attacks
2001 anthrax attacks
The 2001 anthrax attacks in the United States, also known as Amerithrax from its Federal Bureau of Investigation case name, occurred over the course of several weeks beginning on Tuesday, September 18, 2001, one week after the September 11 attacks. Letters containing anthrax spores were mailed to...

, TIGR partnered with the National Science Foundation and the FBI to sequence the strain of Bacillus anthracis
Bacillus anthracis
Bacillus anthracis is the pathogen of the Anthrax acute disease. It is a Gram-positive, spore-forming, rod-shaped bacterium, with a width of 1-1.2µm and a length of 3-5µm. It can be grown in an ordinary nutrient medium under aerobic or anaerobic conditions.It is one of few bacteria known to...

used in those attacks. The results of this analysis were published in the journal Science in 2002. The genetic evidence was later credited by the FBI with helping to pinpoint the precise sample of anthrax bacteria, from a lab in Fort Detrick, Maryland, that was the source of the attacks.

In late 2006, TIGR became a division of the J. Craig Venter Institute
J. Craig Venter Institute
The J. Craig Venter Institute is a non-profit genomics research institute founded by J. Craig Venter, Ph.D. in October 2006. The Institute was the result of consolidating four organizations: the Center for the Advancement of Genomics, The Institute for Genomic Research, the Institute for...

 (JCVI).
In March/April 2007 the divisions were dissolved and TIGR was absorbed under the JCVI name. After presiding over the organization for nearly 10 years Dr. Fraser
Claire M. Fraser
Claire M. Fraser-Liggett is an American microbiologist and the current head of the Institute for Genome Sciences at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore...

 (ex-wife of Craig Venter
Craig Venter
John Craig Venter is an American biologist and entrepreneur, most famous for his role in being one of the first to sequence the human genome and for his role in creating the first cell with a synthetic genome in 2010. Venter founded Celera Genomics, The Institute for Genomic Research and the J...

) resigned her position and left the organization on April 20, 2007.

External links

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